thailand Days of Heaven

By the end of this year, in an effort to create a “golf heaven,” Siam Country Club plans to break ground on its third golf course.

The New course, as it’s being called, will draw even more attention to Siam, which is already something of a paradise on earth for Asia’s golf business. The club, one of the first private enclaves in Thailand, opened in 1971 and has hosted a Honda-sponsored LPGA event every year since 2007. It currently offers 45 holes of golf.

The New course will take shape on 200 acres dotted with lakes that will come into play on about half of its holes. Its designer, Brit Stenson of Cleveland, Ohio-based IMG, says the layout won’t be as challenging as Siam’s Old and Plantation tracks. “A lot of their clientele is Japanese,” Stenson explains, “and they want something more forgiving.”

To that end, Stenson has designed a course with large greens and shallow bunkers. The track will stretch to 7,489 yards, but he believes the club’s members and vacationers will more often play it at somewhere between 6,000 and 6,500 yards. And while Stenson often collaborates with one of the touring pros managed by IMG, he’s likely flying solo at Siam.

The club is located in a suburb of Pattaya, along the Gulf of Thailand. It was established by Thaworn Phornprapha, the founder of Siam Motors Company. Siam Motors began its existence as a seller of new and used cars, graduated to become the first overseas distributor for Nissan, and then opened an assembly plant in Thailand. Nowadays it’s diversified into manufacturing and trading operations for companies such as Hitachi (elevators), Yamaha (musical and audio products), and Komatsu (heavy equipment).

The club is now run by Phornprapha’s son, Phornthep, who’s taken his father’s dream of creating Thailand’s premier golf destination and run with it. In 2006, Phornprapha hired Scottsdale, Arizona-based Schmidt Curley Golf Design to redesign Siam’s 7,162-yard Old course and to build a new 27-hole complex, the Plantation course. And after the New course opens, he’ll likely hire Stenson to design an “international-standard” golf academy.

“Our objective for the New course,” Phornprapha has said, “is to create something that is beautiful and very unique from our existing courses, providing golfers with an experience that is fun and memorable.”

The New course is expected to open in early 2014. As far as his future plans for Siam go, Phornprapha hasn’t spelled anything out. But he has close to 800 acres of undeveloped property to work with.

The original version of this post appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.