Dalat Palace Golf Club

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

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 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 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 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.