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This spring, all 18 holes are open at New Kuta Golf Course, a Golfplan-Fream, Dale & Ramsey design on Bali’s southernmost tip.
The first nine opened last October and the second nine this past May. The course overlooks Balangan Beach and is the centerpiece of a resort development that will eventually feature hotels, villas, restaurants and shops. The Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay are already nearby; both have arrangements for guests to play New Kuta, site of the 2009 Indonesian Open.
Golfplan partner David Dale believes that New Kuta, with its native vegetation sitting along the edges of fairways, will remind many of another tournament venue, the Plantation Course at the Kapalua Resort in Hawaii, where the PGA Tour holds its Mercedes Championship each January.
“It has a quasi-links feel to it, though it generally plays along cliff tops rather than down near the shore,” Dale said. “This tableau has a real appeal, of course, as places like Kapalua and Pebble Beach exemplify. At New Kuta, there are holes that run right along the sea. The par-4 14th and par-3 15th play right down to the water and travel along ocean’s edge. They are very memorable, but the holes that sit higher on the property have water views that are longer and, in their own way, are more breathtaking.”
“We are very happy with the final product,” Dale continued. “Many local events have already taken place there and the owner seems very pleased. It would have been difficult to build a golf course on this site that wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous. New Kuta is all that, but it’s also got real strategic integrity.”
The par-72, 6,812-yard layout has a links feel with native grasses, vegetation and trees bordering its seashore paspalum fairways, tees and roughs. The greens are planted with ultradwarf Bermudagrass.
This latest Golfplan design should help stimulate a Balinese tourist economy that was hit hard following the 2002 terrorist bombings that killed 240 foreign tourists, many of them Australian. The United States recently lifted its almost decade-long travel advisory to the country. Other nations with similar policies are expected to follow this lead and ease their travel restrictions Indonesia’s famously inviting eastern outpost.
For more information on this and other projects from Golfplan-Fream, Dale & Ramsey, call +1.207.526.7190, or visit www.golfplan.com.