Sentosa Golf Club
Serapong Course ****1/2
A good few ding-dong battles have been fought out at Sentosa Golf Club, home of the Singapore Open since 2005. The tussles between the world’s top pros, however, are equaled by the ferocity of the arguments over which of the club’s two tremendous layouts stakes the most convincing claim for primacy.
It’s the tightest of scraps but by present reckoning, the Serapong course just edges its older rival, the Tanjong, on points.
Located on Sentosa Island – a tourist playground just off the main island – the courses here are as much of a draw as banner attractions such as Universal Studios and the long beaches on the south coast.
The Serapong Course is a testament to the ingenuity of its designer Ronald Fream. There was not much room to play with when Fream was tasked with crafting a second layout on Sentosa in the late 1970s, but the architect’s use of (as he puts it) “all the sand” from shipping channel dredging helped reclaim enough land for a significant part of the layout. In 2007, the course underwent an impressive S$12 million upgrade, which focused on re-contouring the playing surfaces and incorporating the much-lauded SubAir greens maintenance system.
The results are spectacular. The first nine snakes through the heavily wooded land that already existed while the second loop – the one routed on reclaimed land – is more open in character. Naturally, there are many memorable holes. The signature 13th is a par-5 that sweeps around a lake while the 16th is another stunning long hole with an extremely narrow approach.
Par: 72 Yardage: 7,100
Greens fee: S$330-450
Architect: Ronald Fream (1982)
Contact: www.sentosagolf.com
