Lanhai opened in 2009 as a two-course facility, which, it must be said, possessed quite a nice feel, including some well-manufactured dunes on the former Links Course, the specific subject of our 2017 renovation. However, many of the finer details didn’t do the site justice. The revetted pot-style bunkers looked out of scale; some of the tee-carries were overgrown with weeds; and the green contours didn’t blend out into the dunes. Many of the greens and tees felt perched on the high points and somewhat disconnected from the dunes. We wanted to give golfers the chance to play their way through the dunes, not across the top of them.

Words by Ashley Mead