Vietnam built a golf coast in twenty years
Vietnam had almost no golf in the 1990s. It now has roughly 80 courses, and a remarkable number of them sit on the same 150-kilometre stretch of coast around Da Nang. That concentration is what makes the country interesting rather than merely cheap: you can play four championship courses by four different designers without changing hotel.
Green fees at the best courses typically run 100–250 USD, well under half what comparable courses cost in Japan or Australia. One thing to know before you arrive: caddies are effectively mandatory on almost every Vietnamese course. It is not negotiable, it adds roughly 20–25 USD plus a tip, and the caddies are generally very good at reading greens you have never seen.
Ba Na Hills Golf Club, Da Nang
Designed by Luke Donald — his first course as a designer — at the foot of the Ba Na Hills, twenty minutes from Da Nang. An 18-hole par 72 cut through forest rather than laid out across open land.
It is an honest course rather than a brutal one: there is room off the tee, but the approaches punish a bad choice of club. The combination of trees and mountains also means the wind behaves differently on almost every hole.
Laguna Golf Lang Co
Sir Nick Faldo’s course sits halfway between Da Nang and Hue, on a strip of land pinned between the mountains and the South China Sea. An 18-hole par 71 that changes character as you go: some holes run through rice paddies still worked by local farmers, others climb into the dunes toward the water.
Faldo has said the terrain was among the best he has been given, and the course is routinely rated in Vietnam’s top two. It is also the easiest to fold into the rest of a trip — the Hai Van Pass is just north, and Hue is an hour away.
The Bluffs Ho Tram Strip
Greg Norman’s course in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, is a different proposition entirely: a true links laid out in coastal dunes with elevation changes of more than 50 metres and ocean visible from nearly every hole.
The Bluffs hosted the Ho Tram Open on the Asian Tour in 2015 and 2016 and is widely rated Vietnam’s strongest course. It is about two hours from Ho Chi Minh City, which makes it the obvious choice if the trip starts or ends in the south.
Sky Lake Resort & Golf Club, Hanoi
Forty kilometres west of Hanoi, Sky Lake has two 18-hole courses — Sky and Lake — by the Korean architect Ahn Moon Hwan. The Lake course is the photographed one, with holes running along and over the water.
It is the practical option if the trip begins in the capital: close enough for a round on a day you were not going to spend anywhere else.
Two more, if the week needs filling
The claim of a golf coast only holds if there are enough courses to make moving hotel unnecessary. There are.
Hoiana Shores Golf Club, between Da Nang and Hoi An, is by Robert Trent Jones Jr. and opened in 2020. It is the most exposed of the group — built directly on the coastal dunes with the sea alongside much of the round — and therefore the one where wind decides the score.
Montgomerie Links Vietnam, by Colin Montgomerie and open since 2009, sits ten minutes from Da Nang airport in flat dune land planted with pines. It is the most forgiving course on the coast, which makes it the right choice when the group plays off widely different handicaps.
That puts six championship courses within an hour of the same hotel. Thailand has more courses in total, but they are scattered; this is the difference.
Planning golf into the trip
Season: February to August on the central coast. From September to January the typhoon season can bring heavy rain around Da Nang and Hue. In the south around Ho Chi Minh City you can play year-round, driest from December to April.
Time of day: book early morning. From eleven o’clock the heat and humidity become a genuine opponent, and afternoon showers are common in summer.
Equipment: every course listed here rents decent sets, so the bag can stay at home if the trip involves domestic flights.
A realistic plan: three rounds in a week around Da Nang is plenty. The fourth is usually the one you regret, because it costs the day in Hoi An or on the Hai Van Pass that the rest of the trip was actually about.
What else is right next door
The golf coast around Da Nang is the same stretch that holds most of central Vietnam’s other attractions. Hoi An is forty minutes away, and the Golden Bridge stands in the same hills as the Ba Na Hills course.
For the rest of the country, see fascinating travel spots in Vietnam and the best hotels in Hanoi. Further north lies Ha Long Bay, and inland the caves at Phong Nha. And the central coast is where the cooking is most distinctive — take Vietnamese food from Hanoi to Saigon with you.
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