Raising the Bar

To build upon the reason why the Ho Tram Open is such an important event - and ignoring the first-rate hotel that is obviously a crucial logistical element here - it is that the golf course is a fully-fledged layout in the most traditional sense. It is, for want of a better description, a proper track. This is absolutely not your run-of-the-mill resort layout. This is a links-like venue that rampages across what is surely the most impressive dunescape this side of the British Isles. The wind whistles, the bunkers are rugged and cavernous and the raised greens are slick; simply put, the players that can manage their trajectory and keep the ball down will prosper. This is fundamentally pure golf. In fact, outside of The Open and the US Open experiment at the linksy Chambers Bay, the Ho Tram Open could well be the most testing tournament in the professional game in 2015. It’s going to be great fun to watch.

That it will be among the most enthralling layouts that the Asian Tour has ever seen is without question. In architecture terms, the Tour’s venues have been hit with the uninspired stick. The courses, while largely well maintained and nice to look at it in from a landscaping point of view, hold little intrigue and bear - and this is rather a large generalization, I admit - the ho-hum ingredients of signature design firms that have made hay in this part of the world: overwhelming bunkering, huge greens, vast acres of fairway grass. In essence, hit it high and watch it stop. There are a few exceptions, of course, but it remains a fact that the region’s best layouts are largely unknown to the television viewer.

Ho Tram, much like the other Norman-designed course in Vietnam – the wonderful Danang Golf Club, which is situated on the coast outside of the country’s fourth largest city - is of a different breed. The playing surfaces are fast, the at-times strongly contoured greens always favour a particular angle from the fairway to attack from and the playing areas themselves, while largely generous, are framed by wild dunes and sandy scrub. But unlike Danang, this is not a course that presents an easy walk; elevation change is the name of the game on a number of holes and you have to think that the winner of the inaugural Ho Tram Open will be among the fittest that the Tour has to offer. And of course, the most skillful.