Raffles Country Club ***1/2
Palm Course
Golfers of a nervous disposition should exert caution before deciding whether to take on the Palm Course. The other (also highly recommended) layout at Raffles Country Club may be known as the Lake course but the Palm has a good few torpedoes in its aquatic armory too.
Originally laid out by Robert Trent Jones II and remodelled by design company Nelson and Haworth in 2001, the course isn’t the longest, measuring just 6640 yards from the blue tees. If your game, however, is modelled on Ballesteros-style powers of recovery rather than Donald-like precision you’ll likely find the course as much of a monster as any of Asia’s more lengthy behemoths.
Water doesn’t just come into the equation at a good percentage of the holes – its lurking presence can be felt at almost all of them. Sometimes, it's there just as a reminder of greater challenges yet to come, at other times it’s a fully-fledged barrier designed to strike fear into all but the doughtiest of players.
Testers include the 14th, a par-4 that doglegs round a lake to a green sandwiched between the water and a marsh, the 12th, a short but treacherous par-3 over more aqua and the 18th, a testing closer that involves a marsh, a reservoir and, you guessed it, another lake.
Par: 72 Yardage: 6,640
Green fee: S$150-203
Architect: Robert Trent Jones II (1988),
Nelson & Haworth (2001)
Contact: www.rcc.org.sg
