Kings Island Golf Resort Hanoi - Kings Course

Gunnar Kobin

Mar 24

5 min read

Updated: Oct 22

I do not know why they called a Jack Nicklaus II design the Kings Course. It should have been the Bear Course.

Let me start with the boat, because that is how the day starts.

You park at the dock, get on a speedboat and cross Dong Mo Lake with the Ba Vi mountains in front of you. It takes about five minutes. As the island gets closer, the crossing, the mountains and the simple fun of arriving somewhere by boat put you in exactly the right mood for golf. Not many resorts can do that. Kings Island can, and they know how to use it.

Whether the golf lives up to the entrance is a harder question.

First, the drive. It is about an hour and a half west from central Hanoi, out of the city and across flat countryside until the Dong Mo reservoir appears on your right. It is a long way, but the distance makes the point. By the time you are on the boat, you have properly left Hanoi.

The resort is huge. It is built on 350 hectares of land and lakes, with another 1,500 hectares of waterfront land around it, and three golf courses with 55 holes between them.

If you are only playing one course, a round and a drive back to Hanoi is fine. If you want to play all three, stay at the Melia Ba Vi Mountain Retreat. You skip the 90-minute drive and can be among the first on the tee. It is a better trip, and a better trip is worth the extra effort.

A bit of history. The Kings Course was designed by Jack Nicklaus II and opened in 2018. It has wide championship fairways, scattered bunker complexes and a modern resort feel that does not pretend to be anything else. From the back tees it is over 7,300 yards, which sounds like a lot until you stand on the 1st and see a fairway wide enough to land a small aircraft on.

OK, the actual golf.

I will be honest. The first few holes are bland compared with the rest. A lot of them are similar to each other, with nothing much to tell them apart and no real chance for anything interesting to happen. You hit a good shot, it goes where you aimed, and nothing else happens. Three holes in I was quietly calculating what the drive out had cost me. Four holes in I was still calculating.

Somewhere around the middle of the front nine it starts to change. The woods open up and the holes start asking for something instead of accepting whatever you give them. On the back nine the course changes again. Water comes at you from every angle. Approaches need specific yardages from a specific side of the fairway, and the wrong shot is punished on tricky greens. The back nine is good golf, and it makes you forget the front nine faster than the front nine deserves.

Two holes stand out. The par-3 4th and the 232-yard 17th are both well bunkered, proper holes. You feel the weight of the shot before you swing. They give you an idea of what the whole course could have been if that energy had been kept up all the way round.

My own round, in March 2026, was played off the Gold tees, slope 138, which in hindsight was ambitious. I shot 90. The scorecard tells a slightly different story from my opinion of the course.

On the bland front nine I went out in 43. Par, par to start, then a 6 on the par-4 3rd. I made a 3 on the 4th, the good par 3, and another 3 on the par-3 6th. A double on the 9th spoiled a reasonable half.

Then came the back nine, the part I am telling you is the good golf. I came home in 47. Doubles on the 10th, the par-5 11th and the 16th, and a 4 on the 232-yard 17th. So the holes I find boring I played better, and the holes I recommend took four more shots off me. I stand by the recommendation. The back nine is better. It is also harder, and it made sure I knew it.

Do not forget the 19th.

Kings Island has an extra hole called the Waterfall Hole, a short par 3 played for fun, not for score. It sits right next to the clubhouse, with a waterfall and an island green. It is pure theatre and not ashamed of it at all. Of everything at Kings Island, this is the thing I will still be talking about in five years.

Some practical points. The clubhouse is huge and sits on the highest hill, with a view over the whole course and the lake. There is a restaurant for after the round and a bar for everything else. It feels like a complete resort.

The driving range does not. It is small, not well maintained and clearly at the bottom of the upgrade list. It does not match the rest of the property, and between a poor range and the first few holes there are not many good options for warming up.

The buggies have no GPS. Northern Vietnam seems to have agreed on this across the board. Bring a rangefinder. On the back nine especially, with water framing so many approaches, you need your exact yardage.

The other two courses are worth knowing about. The Mountain View Course is older and wilder, with jungle and forest and the Ba Vi range behind every tee, and a rawness the Kings Course does not have and does not try to have. The Lakeside Course has water in play on 14 of 18 holes, small greens and swampy ground, and it is unforgiving in a very specific and repetitive way. The three courses really are different from each other, which is rarer at a multi-course resort than it sounds. Play all three. That is the point of coming out here.

Final word.

Should you play it? Yes, and ideally the other two courses as well. The resort justifies the trip. The boat crossing is a real highlight, not a gimmick. The back nine of the Kings Course is worth sitting through the quiet early holes, and the 19th is worth it on its own.

Play all three courses, bring a rangefinder, and let the opening holes of the Kings Course pass without panic. It gets better. It gets a lot better. Just maybe not on your scorecard.