64 been sculpted above and below that level by Phillips’ team of shapers. A key consideration in Phillips’ plan for the landscape was to ensure the golf course would be protected from the Chao Phraya River. It is a source of good-quality water, but the Chainat and Chao Phraya dams, about 80 miles upstream, are prone to breaching. With the guidance of the civil engineers, a three-metrehigh landform was built around the property to mitigate the risk of flooding. Inside the property, Phillips created landforms up to 14 metres high along with creeks that move water efficiently around the course, “There are two creeks, one that starts near the second tee and one that starts above the sixteenth green.” says Phillips. “They merge on the tenth and then flow down to the large lake adjacent to the fourteenth and seventeenth greens. That lake then overflows into an even larger lake that provides the necessary water storage capacity during the tropical rainy season.” A flat site, of course, provides something of a blank slate for design. “When you have a blank slate, the challenge is to create variety and uniqueness. That can be by building something that is a little unexpected.” says Mark Thawley, design associate for Phillips. A good example of this comes early in the round, at the 495-yard fourth, in the form of an element of blindness created by the rolling fairway that obscures the putting surface. A small mid-bunker opens up a window in the ridge, leaving only a glimpse of the bunkerless green and, for some pin positions, a walk filled with anticipation of how closely the ball will have fed to the pin. The turf varieties selected for firm, fast playing conditions and supplied by Sports Turf Solutions were Trinity Zoysia for tees and surrounds, Zeon Zoysia for fairways, Bahia for rough and TifEagle for greens. The fifth, a short par four, might – if the tees are forward – entice players to go for the green, taking on the creek that runs up the entire right side of the hole. It’s a little reminiscent of the challenge of the famous fourteenth at Loch Lomond, in that the safe play is a lay-up left, before crossing water to the well-guarded green. The fourth and fifth were particularly challenging for players at the 2022 LIV Golf Bangkok event. For Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra, who won the tournament, his only two bogeys of the entire three rounds came at this pair of holes. By this point in the round some of Phillips’ hallmarks have already been revealed, including generous fairway width that in some places, for example at the first and ninth, is shared, superb shortgrass connections between greens and the next tee, and boldly contoured putting surfaces. The two par threes, the heavily protected third tucked into the southwest corner of the site and the seventh, which plays over a creek and a huge bunker, punctuate a stimulating opening nine. On the back nine, however, the course ramps up a gear. It opens with a picturesque par four, with water running down the left side of a fairway that is shared with the eighteenth. Where the creek crosses STONEHILL The par-three thirteenth is 229 yards from the back tees and gives players the option to run a ball in from the left
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