Bali Tourism News

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 features native grasses, vegetation and a handful of trees bordering its seashore paspalum fairways, tees and roughs. The greens are planted with smooth-rolling ultradwarf bermudagrass.

The new course 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.

What visitors will find when they return to Bali’s Pecatu region, located south of Jimbaran, is a semi-arid landscape with unsurpassed sunsets along Dreamland Beach. The surrounding rugged terrain reminds many of what they might find in the American Southwest, Tunisia, or drier portions of South Africa.

The surprised Golfplan staff was cautiously optimistic in 2007 when notified of the progress. Nine holes had been completed before the office had been contacted. However, in a testament to the accuracy of Golfplan’s construction drawings, these holes were found to be quite good and in tune with the original design.

Subsequently, Golfplan founder Ronald Fream made several site visits to oversee completion of the project. Indeed, departing from the initial land planner’s concept, Golfplan was able to reroute the course so the future hotel and residential components would have equally compelling views of the course and ocean. The new routing also reduced the amount of earthmoving to just 200,000 cubic meters.

“We were able to maximize the real-estate frontage,” Dale explained. “That meant additional savings in terms of course drainage and resort infrastructure. The little earth we did move helped better define landing areas, green and tee sites, as well as pick up water and move it off the course quickly when it does rain.”