Two Vietnam golf courses among world’s 100 best

The Bluffs Grand Ho Tram Strip in the coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau and BRG Danang Golf Resort in Danang city have been listed in world’s top 100 courses by the Golf Digest magazine.

The Bluffs is ranked 65th and BRG, 99th. Courses from 25 different countries are listed in this year’s rankings.

Located in Xuyen Moc district, The Bluffs Grand Ho Tram Strip “is very reminiscent of a Florida golf course, Jupiter Hills”, the magazine says. The course was designed in 2014 by the legendary Greg Norman, who now lives in Florida.

“Like Jupiter, it's separated from the ocean by a highway, but plays through dramatic sand dunes covered in tropical vegetation, has joint fairways and even a pair of par 3s playing from a common dunes-top tee box complex to greens in opposite directions.”

Invested in by BRG Group, a pioneer in the development of golf tourism in Vietnam, the BRG Danang Golf Resort was also designed by Greg Norman in 2010.

The Norman Dunes course evokes an inland sand-forest course more than a links, primarily because the majority of the routing is set inland, the magazine notes.

BRG Danang, sprawling across 350 hectares, is situated on the central coast of Ngu Hanh Son district. The 18-hole golf course features a 7,160-yard layout, “with the holes, running back and forth though sections of scrub pine… vividly rendered with sweeping cape and bay bunkers, three gettable short par 4s and the type of tight turf bleeding into hollows and sandscapes that has been a fixture in the Norman design portfolio.”

“The golf potential of Vietnam’s eastern seaboard is still just beginning to be discovered -the vast stretches of dunes and coastal vegetation scream for links golf, if only resort developments don’t commandeer the best of it,” Golf Digest added.