The Masterpiece of Luke Donald's Debut, Ba Na Hills Golf Club

Gunnar Kobin

Mar 24

5 min read

Updated: Oct 22

Luke Donald surprised me. I did not expect a former world number one's very first course design to be the best round of my whole Vietnam trip, and it was. Not even close.

Ba Na Hills Golf Club is in the foothills west of Danang, about 25 minutes from downtown. Coming from the Legends courses, the Norman on the dunes and the Nicklaus on the floodplain, you drive away from the coast and inland towards the Truong Son Mountains. The air gets noticeably cooler. The flat, almost dry land along the river falls away and the vegetation gets thicker and greener. By the time you pull up at the clubhouse it is obvious the next 18 holes will have nothing in common with the last 18.

The practice facilities set the tone. A proper driving range with covered bays, putting greens and a short-game area. You can actually warm up properly before the first tee, and it tells you the management is thinking about the whole day and not just the course.

A bit of history. In 2011 Donald was world number one, and the first player to top both the PGA Tour and European Tour money lists in the same year. He has since become one of the best Ryder Cup captains there has been. His reputation is built on intelligence, precision and an understanding of strategic golf, and all of that shows up here. Most architects spend ten years finding their style. Donald seems to have turned up with his already sorted.

OK, the actual golf.

Every hole feels like it has a reason to exist. The decisions you make on the tee play out fairly, for better or worse. There are no tricks, no random bounces built in and no cheap difficulty. It looks like the work of a designer who understood the ground, respected it and built something that belongs on it.

Donald has talked about how remarkable the Vietnamese landscape is, and standing out there you understand him. The Truong Son Mountains rise and fall behind every hole. Old forest closes in around you. Rocky streams cut across the valleys between the two nines. I cannot think of many places where the surroundings are this dominant, and Donald was smart enough to let them be the star rather than fighting them.

The front nine is the easy half. The ground rises and falls gently, the slopes are mild, there are dry, rocky creek beds and the gaps between the trees are wide. It is a scoring nine. The golf has a rhythm to it and the mood stays calm.

So naturally the easy half is where I did the damage. I made a birdie on the par-4 3rd, which looked like the start of something, and then took 7 on the 4th and 7 again on the 5th, both par 5s. A 6 on the 7th for good measure. Front nine 44, on the nine that is supposed to give you shots back.

Then you stand on the 10th tee and the course changes completely. The green sits on top of a high hill with sky and a huge mountain landscape behind it. You are driving up to a target that seems to be on a different level from you, and it needs both commitment and precision. I made a 5 there, which on that hole I will call a moral victory. Then an 8 on the par-5 11th, which I will not call anything.

From the 10th on it gets hilly. Not in a way that destroys your legs, but in a way that changes how every shot looks and feels. Each hole on the back nine is a separate problem, and the slopes make every one of them feel like its own event.

My back nine card has two blanks on it. Holes 13 and 18 never got written down, so I cannot give you an honest total, and I am not going to invent one. What I can tell you is that I made a par on the 12th and that the rest of the back nine was a fair fight that I mostly lost by a shot here and there.

The closing stretch is where the photographs get taken. The par 3s play steeply downhill. On one par 4 you take the buggy up to the tee and drive down to a fairway far below you. These are holes you remember for good. You will try to describe them over dinner, oversell them, and still somehow undersell them. They belong in the lifetime photo album.

The feel is different from the coast too. The Danang coastal courses are exposed and windy. Ba Na Hills is tucked in and sheltered by the hills, so it is warmer and more humid. Some people will be glad of a day without the coastal wind.

The greens were a big improvement after the Legends courses. Smoother, faster and rolling truer. Leaving the ball below the hole actually mattered here, which is how it should be. Better speed and better surfaces made the putting rewarding again, and that changes the whole round.

The best compliment I can give the layout is that every hole made me want to hurry to the next one. I was curious about what was coming the whole way round. You bound around Ba Na Hills. You do not trudge.

Donald once said the land here gave him so much to work with that the challenge was using it wisely, not using all of it. That kind of restraint, knowing what to leave alone, is the mark of someone who understands the game. He has made that land sing.

Should you play it? Yes. I tell golfers to play Ba Na Hills first, before the coastal courses, although I warn them that after this the coast will feel like a step down. The Nicklaus and the Norman have their merits, but Ba Na Hills is simply better. It is the course in Danang I most want to go back to.

Final word. Go to Danang, play a few courses and make Ba Na Hills one of them. If you can only choose one, choose this one. Donald has done something special with his first design, and the land, as good as it is, is still not quite as good as what he did with it.

I want to go back. That is the only verdict that matters.