Dalat Palace Golf Club

A French architect imagined this layout in 1922, but it took stimulation from the country’s most prominent golf supporter (Bao Dai, the last emperor of Vietnam) to spur its ultimate construction later in the decade.

Today, it’s the top-rated course in Vietnam — for its classic design chops, for the incredible rise and fall of its terrain and for its flawless bentgrass conditions. Indeed, Dalat Palace is one of the few bentgrass layouts in SE Asia, thanks to Dalat’s cooler, 1,500m-high climate.

The course itself, measuring 7,009 yards (6,409 meters) from the tips, is an uninterrupted string of inventive, demanding golf holes. Its twists and undulations are breathtaking and the landscaped outlying areas are a flower maven’s delight, with bougainvillea, red salvia, impatiens, mimosa and hydrangeas.

The course was abandoned after WWII and revived in 1959. In early 1966, several months before he beat Arnold Palmer to win the U.S. Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, Billy Casper played the course on a tour of Vietnam organized by the U.S. State Department. The course was abandoned again in 1975, after the reunification of Vietnam, and initiated its second comeback in 1993 with a multi-million dollar restoration and expansion by a group of American investors.

Through four consecutive surveys (2001, 2003, 2005 & 2007), Golf Digest has hailed the Dalat Palace Golf Club as the top course in Vietnam in its world renown Planet Golf Survey. Asian Golf Monthly, in its 2007 survey, recognized the course as one of the top-10 in all Asia. The club is also a member of the Finest Golf Clubs of The World (London).

A full practice facility complements the golf course, with an open 290-yard driving range, a putting green and practice bunkers.

In 1994 Dalat emerged again as the ideal golf retreat in Southeast Asia. The 18- hole golf Course is crafted into the area’s rolling hills, surrounded by stately pine trees and seated above the majestic lake Xuan Huong.Dalat has been known for decades as the City of Eternal Spring. This is due to its year round cool crisp mountain climate. The course weaves its way through stately pine trees to oversized and delicately manicured bent grass greens.