Legends Golf Danang — Nicklaus Course: Water, Work, and a Few Too Many Unfinished Buildings
- Gunnar Kobin
- Mar 24
- 5 min read
I did not like Nicklaus Course in Legends Golf Danang
Danang has the potential to be a top-tier golfing destination; with two UNESCO World Heritage Sites a short distance away, a world-class airport, and a stunning coastline, and with its proximity to a handful of other top-quality courses, it offers golfing vacations that span several days without having to play the same course twice. On paper, it looks great. However, as the Nicklaus Course at Golf Legends Resort has shown me, the level of delivery in relation to the potential can be much wider in practice than it may appear.
Getting There
A direct flight from Ho Chi Minh City takes one hour and you'll find yourself at an airport that's a thirty minute ride to the resort. No epic road trips, no heroic logistics — Danang is just a simple destination to get to, and the resort's convenient location between the Marble Mountains and the ocean is what draws the most potential. This is why it is all the more disappointing to see potential setbacks.
The Resort and its Context
Legends Golf Resort spans 350 hectares and has two courses created by two legendary designers, making it the first 36-hole resort in Danang. The Norman Course opened in 2010 to great praise. A decade later, the Nicklaus Course was opened. Together, they represent the so-called best golfing experience in all of central Vietnam.
The 2019 and 2020 property crash was the first major economic event affecting the Vietnam coastline and property development. If you travel along the resort’s border, or look out beyond the course boundaries, you can see the aftermath of the event. Incomplete construction projects, half-finished developments, and unfulfilled promises of walls to cover the dead space from the foundation down. It’s hard to miss the impact of the slowed development. Most of the courses are in the sightline of stagnant construction sites, which greatly degrades the experience. The round is on the line, and you’re trying to tune in for a challenging shot to the water, but a concrete dead zone that has not been worked on for years is in your line of sight.Danang will forever carry these scars. The wounds from the boom-bust cycle of the late 2010s are visible on the city and the golf resort tells these stories more than the marketing materials suggest.
The Nicklaus Course: What You're Actually Playing
We'll begin with the positives. Holes that are adjacent to the Coco River are actually quite nice — they have a real Florida vibe, which is what Nicklaus intended. Hardwood bulkheads from the United States border tees, fairways, and greens, and offer a contrast to the rest of the landscaping. When the course is underperforming, the wide vistas of the river, adjacent villages, the city of Danang, and the Marble Mountains will provide scenic distractions.
In this case, the Nicklaus Course is built on a floodplain, rather than the nearby, elevated, dune-like topography, as is the case with the Norman Course. The Nicklaus Course aims to provide a very different golfing experience than the one provided by the Norman Course. The Nicklaus Course, however, is working with a more serious topographical limitation than the Norman Course. Although they sought to provide two distinctly different courses, the Nicklaus Course suffers from a lack of topographical variety to the extent that it compromises the experience of playing the course.
There are a number of well-known characteristics of a Nicklaus-designed course, one of which is a seemingly unbridled enthusiasm for the inclusion of water features on the course. In most cases, a strategically placed water hazard will flank the fairways, greens, or both the fairways and greens. The par 5s on this course are designed to be reachable in two shots for players who are willing to take the risk of a water hazard. While the course features a number of well-constructed holes, by the back nine the unadventurous repetitiveness of the holes will leave players bored and unengaged.
Here is some constructive criticism. Nicklaus makes you work, and his courses are full of thought, precision, and patience demand. This is aesthetically pleasing from an architectural perspective. It is, however, not fun. There is a difference between a course that is challenging, and a course that is engaging, and Nicklaus all too often seems to go on the wrong side of these. It feels more like you are taking an exam than playing a round.
The Conditions
The greens may just be the worst that is offered anywhere, and the condition of the course is all the more frustrating for how much work is put into the course to the greens. During the round, the surface of the green seems patchy and There is not. This seems to be the worst condition of the greens found anywhere.
The fairways were in relatively good condition, and the bulkheads around the river holes were maintained well. This is not the case for the greens. When you have to spend the last part of every hole in this condition, it spoils the whole experience.
The Pace of Play
There's no better way to say it than slow. It was extremely evident that the round took longer than it should, and not once did a marshall show up to control the flow of play. On a course like this, where the water hazards and the time it takes for golfers to take drops, reload, and rethink their shots, the round uncomfortably stretches.
The buggies also lacked GPS, which, on a course where water is in play, is more important than it might be on a simple parkland track. Knowing how far you are from a carry, from the front edge, and from the hazard line is important, and the lack of that information pushes you onto your caddie. The caddies are friendly and try hard, but caddie quality is variable, and on a course where being able to select the right club for a shot over water is the core skill, "try your best" is simply not good enough. It is highly recommended to bring a range finder and GPS to the course.
How this all ties in with a trip to Danang
Danang still remains a decent option for a golf trip in Vietnam for one reaso; it still has a decent number of golf course options that you can play on a multi-day trip. The Norman Course has good variety to offer for a decent multi-day trip at Ba Na Hills, Montgomerie Links, Laguna Lang Co, and newly opened Hoiana Shores to the south. The Nicklaus Course can be perceived as a filler to be played for the sake of completeness as it does offer different river holes and landscapes that you need to play the course once for the sake of playing the river holes.
However, the course has a lot left to be desired. The surrounding construction sites looks terrible. The greens were a mess. The rest of the course can be fun to play if the round was played at the right time. The fun deficit was something that needed to be considered when playing the course.
Final Verdict
The Nicklaus Course at Legends Danang has a well-considered layout that has some pleasurable holes that definitely has a design pedigree that commands respect; however, it also describes a course that at this time provides very little to its possibilities — slow greens, slow rounds, construction site ghost towns in the line of sight, and a design formula that seems to favour in logic over enjoyment.
Come to Danang for the Norman Course, for Ba Na Hills, for the city and the food and the history. Sure, play the Nicklaus Course, but do so with a realistic set of expectations, not bucket list ones.
And take your rangefinder.
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