OCEAN DUNES GOLF CLUB

Introduction

Ocean Dunes Golf Club opened in 1996 and immediately set the standard in Southeast Asia for links golf. Laid out by Masters and British Open champion Nick Faldo, Ocean Dunes takes full advantage of its location on the East Sea amid a windswept, natural dunescape.

  

“Ocean Dunes is an outstanding natural site with the sand dunes, sea breezes, beach vegetation and seaviews,” Faldo explains. “We let the dunes determine the routing and the arid look of the course. It has the feel and the playabilityof early Scottish seaside courses — in a tropical climate.”

  

The fairways are generous, as befits a resort track, but the dunes, bunkering and vegetation — buffeted by coastal winds — require strategizing on every hole. From the 6,746-yard tips, this par-72 design will test the best. From the forward tees, Ocean Dunes is simply a tropical delight.

  

The 18 holes are routed adjacent to the Novotel Ocean Dunes Resort, but the golf club welcomes non-hotel play. The clubhouse and its knowledgeable staff tend to a full pro shop, bar and restaurant. Rental clubs are available. Embraced on three sides by the links course and by a private, kilometer-long stretch of the East Sea, the Novotel Ocean Dunes Hotel was built by Russian developers sometime after 1975. Today, the six-storey, 123-room facility has polished its brutal, Soviet-era edges and emerged as the anchor to the vibrant resort scene along the Binh Thuan coast.

  

The crescent-shaped hotel features ample verandahs on every room of the seaside facade. Below, the grassy tropical gardens offer two swimming pools, massage huts, a staffed, children’s play area and floodlit tennis courts. A modern fitness centre rounds out the exercise options while the hotel’s 18-hole golf course ranks as the finest resort course in Vietnam, according to Golf Digest.

In 2006, the hotel opened the first pair of 20 planned bungalows. The villas architecture was modeled on an historic home built by Chinese merchants in the former imperial capital of Hue. Each villa boasts four rooms on the ground floor and two suites on the second floor.