Legends Golf Danang — Nicklaus Course: Water, Work, and a Few Too Many Unfinished Buildings

Gunnar Kobin

Mar 24

5 min read

Updated: Oct 22

I will say it up front: I did not like the Nicklaus Course at Legends Golf Danang. I played it on the 12th of March 2026, and the next day I played the Norman Course at the same resort. The two rounds were 22 shots apart, and that was not because I woke up a different golfer.

On paper Danang should be a top golf destination. Two UNESCO World Heritage Sites a short drive away, a very good airport, a fine coastline, and enough good courses nearby that you can spend several days without playing the same one twice. The Nicklaus Course showed me how wide the gap between that potential and the delivery can be.

Getting there is easy. A direct flight from Ho Chi Minh City takes an hour, and from the airport it is thirty minutes to the resort. No long road trip, no logistics to speak of. The resort sits between the Marble Mountains and the ocean, which is where most of its potential comes from. That makes the setbacks harder to watch.

A bit of history. Legends Golf Resort covers 350 hectares and has two courses by two big-name designers, which made it the first 36-hole resort in Danang. The Norman Course opened in 2010 to a lot of praise, and the Nicklaus Course followed a decade later. Together they are sold as the best golf in central Vietnam.

Then there is what happened around them. The property crash of 2019 and 2020 was the first big economic shock to hit development on this coast, and you can see the aftermath from the course. Unfinished construction, half-built developments, walls that were supposed to hide the dead space and never got built. Most holes have a stalled building site in the sightline. You are standing over a shot that has to carry water, trying to concentrate, and what you are looking at is a slab of concrete nobody has touched in years. Danang will carry those scars for a long time, and the golf resort shows them more honestly than the brochures do.

OK, the actual golf.

The good part first. The holes along the Co Co River are genuinely nice and have a real Florida feel, which is what Nicklaus was after. Hardwood bulkheads brought in from the United States line the tees, fairways and greens and give a contrast to the rest of the landscaping. When the golf is not holding your attention, the views of the river, the villages, Danang city and the Marble Mountains will.

The problem is the land. The Nicklaus Course is built on a floodplain, while the Norman Course has the higher, dune-like ground. The idea was to make the two courses as different as possible, and they are, but the Nicklaus is working with a much more serious limitation. There just is not enough variety in the terrain, and it hurts the round.

Nicklaus is known for loving water, and he has not held back here. Most holes have a hazard along the fairway, the green, or both. The par 5s are built to be reachable in two if you are willing to take the water on. There are some well-made holes, but by the back nine the repetition sets in and I was bored.

Some constructive criticism. Nicklaus makes you work. His courses demand thought, precision and patience, and from an architectural point of view that is admirable. It is not fun. There is a difference between challenging and engaging, and Nicklaus too often ends up on the wrong side of that line. It felt more like sitting an exam than playing a round.

My card agrees with me. A bogey to start and then an 8 on the 2nd, a par 4. A 9 on the par-5 6th, one of those holes that invites you to go for it in two. Front nine 51. On the back I made a par on the 10th and that was the last one I saw: a 6 on the par-3 11th and a 7 on the closing par 5. Back nine 50, 101 in total on a par 73. I am not blaming the architect for all of that. I am blaming him for some of it.

The conditions. The greens may be the worst I have putted on anywhere, which is frustrating given how much work has clearly gone into the rest of the course. They were patchy all the way round. The fairways were in reasonable shape and the bulkheads along the river holes were well kept. The greens were not, and when every hole ends on a surface like that, it spoils the whole thing.

The pace of play was slow. There is no nicer way to say it. The round took far longer than it should have and I did not see a marshal once. On a course with this much water, with players taking drops, reloading and rethinking, a round stretches out uncomfortably.

The buggies have no GPS either. On a course where water is in play that matters more than it would on a simple parkland track. You need to know the carry, the front edge, the hazard line, and without GPS that all falls on your caddie. The caddies are friendly and try hard, but the quality varies, and when picking the right club over water is the main skill the course tests, trying hard is not enough. Bring a rangefinder or GPS.

As for where it fits in a Danang trip, Danang is still a decent choice, for one reason: there are enough courses for a multi-day trip. The Norman Course, Ba Na Hills, Montgomerie Links, Laguna Lang Co and the newer Hoiana Shores to the south make a good week. The Nicklaus Course is the filler you play for completeness. The river holes are different enough from anything else around that it is worth playing once for them.

But there is a lot missing. The construction sites look terrible, the greens were a mess, and the rest of the course can be fun if you catch it at the right time. You have to accept a fun deficit going in.

Should you play it? Once, with realistic expectations. The layout is well considered, there are some good holes and the design pedigree deserves respect. Right now, though, it delivers very little of what it could: poor greens, slow rounds, ghost-town construction in your line of sight, and a design formula that puts logic ahead of enjoyment.

Final word. Come to Danang for the Norman Course, for Ba Na Hills, for the city, the food and the history. Play the Nicklaus if you want to, and then play the Norman the next day.

And take your rangefinder.