The Bluffs Ho Tram: Vietnam's Links Masterpiece That Belongs on Every Golfer's Bucket List

Gunnar Kobin

Mar 24

5 min read

Updated: Oct 22

The Bulffs

Someone told me there was a real links course in southern Vietnam, and I did not believe it. Links golf, to me, means windswept coastlines in Scotland and Ireland, maybe a few spots in Australia. Vietnam means warm weather, lush resort fairways and a cold beer at the turn. The Bluffs Grand Ho Tram took that assumption apart one hole at a time.

Some courses you play and forget. This is one I kept thinking about weeks later, mostly because of how I swung, how the wind came in, and how the view from the high tees made me forget I was holding a club.

Getting there is part of the deal. The course is about 130 km southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, and the drive takes two to two and a half hours depending on traffic. It is not a short trip. The road takes you out through the outskirts of the city and eventually turns into coastline, and it gives you time to unwind. It is worth it.

Stay the night. The InterContinental hotel and casino is on site and is the obvious choice. It is comfortable and convenient, and it lets you do what this course really asks of you, which is to play it twice. I will come back to that.

A bit of history. The Bluffs opened in 2014 and is a Greg Norman design. It is the best course in Vietnam, it is consistently ranked in the top 40 in the world, and it is the best thing Norman has built in the Asia Pacific. The main reason is the firm's minimal-disturbance approach. They routed the course around the natural dune system instead of bulldozing it into shape, and you feel that as you walk it. Nothing looks built. It looks found.

The course sits in and around huge sand hills that rise to 50 metres above sea level, with views out over the South China Sea. Native, creeping vegetation, sand, fast-draining soil. It has the authentic feel that most resort courses do not.

OK, the actual golf.

Be ready for your ego to take a hit on the first visit. The hills are serious. You will gasp a bit walking from green to tee, while your caddie looks completely fine. Add the elevation changes to the number of blind shots and you spend a lot of the round hitting into nothing.

The blind shots are not gimmicks. They come from routing a course through big dunes, and it takes a couple of rounds, or a good caddie, to know what club to hit. Even experienced players will stand on a tee the first time unsure whether it is a 3-wood or a wedge. Use your caddie. They know which holes are driver holes and which are not, and on some holes pulling driver turns a possible bogey into a disaster.

What separates The Bluffs from the rest of Southeast Asia is that it is proper links golf, but up in the high dunes rather than down at sea level. Most links courses hug the shoreline. This one has a surprising amount of up and down as it works through the sand hills.

It reminded me of La Réserve in Mauritius, especially through the core of the course. The poa on the fairways, the greens sitting naturally in the ground, and that old, ashen look, on a course that only opened in 2014. I liked it a lot.

The greens are solid, with plenty of ridges and a reasonable speed. The wind is the real variable. On a flat, still day The Bluffs is a different course from the one you get on a breezy one. In the afternoon you can easily have a three or four club wind, and then every shot needs thinking about.

My own round, in March 2026, went exactly the way the course warns you it will. I opened with a par and then dropped two on the par-3 2nd. The 4th is the high hole with the near 360-degree view over the course, and I made a 6 there, on a par 3. To be fair to myself I birdied the par-5 5th straight after, and then gave all of it back with an 8 on the next par 5. Front nine 45.

The back nine was much more sensible. 39, with a run of pars through the middle, and 84 in total. I would like to say I had worked the course out by then. More likely the course had simply stopped surprising me. Either way, it is the best argument I have for playing it twice.

Most of the views are excellent, especially around the 4th, the 6 notwithstanding. I have to be honest though: more than a few of the ocean-facing views are blocked by waterfront construction. A course like this should feel remote, and the construction is an eyesore you cannot miss. Hopefully the development improves with time. For now it is there.

One more honest point. For the drive you have to do from Ho Chi Minh City, the area feels thin. The Bluffs alone justifies the trip, but there are no other really good courses near it. It needs at least two or three more nearby before it becomes a proper golf destination.

So, play it twice. That is the answer.

Book two rounds and two nights at the InterContinental. Treat the first round as the orientation lap: learn the blind shots, where driver gets you in trouble, which greens are fast, which par 3s are longer than they look. The second round is when you actually play golf. You drop shots on purpose rather than by accident, you go for the right pins, and you understand the pace and the strategy. The course shows itself slowly and pays back the golfer who pays attention.

The hotel and casino complex is not the most atmospheric place I have stayed, but it is polished and comfortable. It is convenient, the facilities are good, and waking up two minutes from the first tee makes an early round a lot easier to get up for.

Should you play it? Yes. The Bluffs is the complete package: good to look at, physically hard, and about as natural as a modern course gets. The blind shots will catch you, the wind will add strokes you did not plan for, and the hills will test your legs as much as your golf. That is links golf. It is supposed to be a fight.

Final word. Get a good caddie, stay the night and play it twice. Done that way, this is a course every golfer should get to at least once.