With over 40 golf courses now open for play, Vietnam has become the new darling of the golf industry taking over from China as ‘the place’ to build championship courses.
With the full support of the current forward thinking government, they are aware of the huge potential the golf and golf vacationers bring to the country’s economy, and are actively encouraging development of first class golf courses across the country.
This is not only good news for us golfers, but it has also attracted some of the top golf designers as well. Greg Norman, Colin Montgomerie and Sir Nick Faldo are just a few who have already created several superb courses.
Flagstick Golf Course Construction Management has cemented its reputation for quality of its work with the opening of a trio of new courses in Vietnam – BRG Legend Hill Golf Resort, FLC SamSon Golf Links and FLC Quy Nhon Golf Links, all collaborations with Nicklaus Design.
A unique project to Southeast Asia and the ASEAN region, Legend Hill has been built with two greens for each hole to ensure top-quality conditions year-round and enable the golf course to be played with varying strategy and length options.
Legend Hill was completed in June 2015. One month later, work was finished at the SamSon project, about 170 kilometers south of Hanoi in Thanh Hoa Province. Both these courses are now open for play.
So, too, is Quy Nhon, located in Vietnam’s central province of Binh Dinh. Remarkably, from start to finish this course was constructed within a five-month period.
The Vietnam government has identified inbound golf tourism as an area of tremendous potential. Currently there are less than 40 courses open for play in the country, but it seems that at least another 30 will be constructed in the foreseeable future.
Indeed, as well as performing pre-construction work on a handful of projects throughout Vietnam scheduled to begin construction in mid-2016, Flagstick broke ground on another new project on February 1 – FLC Dong Hoi Golf Links in Quang Binh Province.
Master-planned for ten championship golf courses, three clubhouses, more than 1,000 villas, a large resort hotel, commercial village and convention center, the first phase will see the development of 36 holes, sculpted by Schmidt-Curley Design, a long-time member of the Asian Golf Industry Federation.
This massive golf complex is scheduled for completion of all construction of the first phase by November with spring 2017 set as the opening date for play.
Watch out Mission Hills in China….you will soon have a competitor here in Vietnam.
