New Swedish Initiative Opens Golf Course in Hua Hin

From Scanasia.com

Late during dry season the landscape in most places in Thailand is commonly dry, simply due to lack of rain.

But a huge valley with open fields, 10 kilometres inland from Hua Hin, surrounded by the completely dry landscape up in the hills, is for some reason still green. And it is guaranteed to stay so all year round. Here is namely the new Swedish-initiated golf course Black Mountain built - and open for playing.

The Paspalum grass is shining emerald green, the 16 000 planted trees and 380 000 other plants and bushes are growing and one can hardly visualize what it will look like later on – with full-grown lush greenery.

The process to acquire the land started only two years ago and the first 18-hole course out of two and the club house, stood ready to greet customers in late April 2007. But the project is far from completed and a golf course never gets “ready”, says Project Manager/Director Kjell Ove Asplund after 13 months of designing, structuring and nurturing the course.

The next phase of the project is the just started construction of villas and condominiums on the 280 rai of land, which will have extensive views over the golf course. A hotel and spa are also part of the master plan. The background to how they could get the land happened by chance. Simon Yates, one of the Asian Tour’s star players, was the first person involved that was shown the land and he brought the team there two years ago.

“Everything that has to do with Black Mountain, the construction, the machinery bought, even the golf carts are absolutely the best you can get. The construction of the bunkers and the greens is the best. The grass we reckon is the best you can use in this part of the world,” says Kenny. They chose to use seashore Paspalum for this golf course’s fairways. “The strongest benefit with this grass is that it gives you a great playing surface and a better colour. So its looks better and play better,” Kenny explains.

The designer of the first course is Phil Ryan, who designed Alpine Golf Club and assisted Greg Norman in designing Thana City Golf & Country Club. Gavan Wilson is Superintendent for construction and maintenance. Irrigation has been another major challenge in the project, explains Kjell: The big issue has been the water and is the water. We have built three lakes and moved 3.4 million cubic metres of soil in the process. We have pump capacity for 20 000 cubic per day. So it’s a really big investment, the biggest in the whole golf course actually.” As much rain water as possible will be collected from the mountains and water left-over from the irrigation system will be recycled.

“They tend to build courses on flat land. Visually it’s going to be more of a wow factor too. Mountains and slopes round about and of course the way it’s been designed. Some courses don’t bother much about that.” Another difference is to construct the golf course first and the houses afterwards, and not the other way around, which of course will attract home buyers more easily. People can see the quality of the golf course when they commit to buying a house.
In terms of players and house buyers they target golfing tourists in general where Hua Hin is more and more becoming a golfer’s paradise. Says Jörgen: “It’s a higher percentage of golfers every year arriving with their golf bags asking for packages, combining it with a nice beach holiday.” “And this new golf course will help promote golfing in Hua Hin. It’ll be good for all the courses,” says Kenny. Swedes will come automatically, given the sport’s enormous popularity in their nation and the large number of Scandinavian visitors and long-stay residents to the resort destination.