Nick Faldo has followed up on his award-winning golf course design in Vietnam with the introduction of a first Faldo Series tournament in the country.
The inaugural Faldo Series Asia Vietnam Championship will take place on September 27-28 at Phan Thiet’s Ocean Dunes Golf Club, a course designed by the six-time Major winner himself. In its last three Planet Golf surveys, Golf Digest (USA) rated the layout among the top two in Vietnam.
Open to players from all Asian countries, the tournament will present new opportunities for young golfers not only in Vietnam, but in neighboring nations such as Cambodia and Laos as well.
"All you have to do is look at the sheer number of people in this part of the world to see there is an extraordinary amount of possibility," said Faldo. "There may be dozens of potential superstars in this region, but we'll never know unless their talent is cultivated. I believe this event can be a stepping stone and I would like to thank the Vietnam Golf Association and Ocean Dunes for helping to make it happen.”
Supported by major partners Mission Hills, The R&A and UBS and patron Korn/Ferry International, the Vietnam Championship will provide talented young golfers aged 11 to 21 with a combination of tournament experience on the course and expert advice off the course. Simultaneously, younger children from the local community will be invited to watch the action and attend a free golf clinic.
“Just as he was fiercely determined to win golf tournaments, Nick has a burning desire to create access to the sport,” said Jeff Puchalski, Ocean Dunes’ general manager and director of golf. “He is displaying it again by making another commitment to Vietnam, where interest in the game is growing but events targeting kids have yet to take root. This could be what spurs a youngster here to become a champion like Nick.”
Up to six players from the Vietnam Championship will qualify for the Faldo Series Asia Grand Final, an R&A World Amateur Golf Ranking event to be hosted by Faldo in March 2009 on the Faldo Course at Mission Hills in China.
Sanctioned by the Asian Tour and the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation, the Faldo Series Asia title has been claimed in previous years by Thailand’s Nakarin Ratanakul and India’s Rashid Khan. Both earned invitations to the Faldo Series Grand Final in Europe and, courtesy of the Asian Tour, a start in the Volvo Masters Asia and a scholarship to stage one of Asian Tour Qualifying School.
Inspired by the decade-long success of the Faldo Series in Europe, Faldo launched the equivalent in Asia in 2006. The Vietnam Championship takes the 2008 schedule to 12 tournaments in nine different countries across the continent.
Opened in 1994, Ocean Dunes has garnered worldwide acclaim for its windswept dunes and singular holes, including the notorious par-3 9th, which sits hard by the South China Sea and has been hailed by GOLF (USA) magazine as one of the best 500 holes in the world.
Anyone wishing to attend the Vietnam Championship, players or spectators, should contact Ocean Dunes Golf Club on (84) 62-823-366 or visit the website at www.vietnamgolfresorts.com.