Set against the wide expanse of the South China Sea, Shanqin Bay is a golf course that signals a new sophistication in Chinese course design. The land around Bo'ao on Hainan Island took a battering from the 2008 tsunami, but in the years since, the surrounding Special Economic Zone has turned the area into a genuine golf and tourism hub — more than thirty courses now, with others still arriving.
Like an ark washing up on a changed shore, Shanqin Bay gave this once-quiet rural stretch of coastline an entirely new identity. The design team is about as heavyweight as course architecture gets: Bill Coore, working alongside two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw. Coore himself has called it one of the more exceptional sites he has been handed, and the finished course does little to argue with him.
A links-style routing across dune and coastline that trusts the ground far more than it trusts machinery.
What sets Shanqin Bay apart from much of the building boom around it is restraint. Coore and Crenshaw are known for minimal earthmoving and a deep respect for natural contour, and that philosophy is on full display here — greens that use the land rather than fight it, and a routing that keeps the sea in view without ever leaning on it as a gimmick.
For a region that has, in places, prioritised scale and spectacle over shot-making, Shanqin Bay is a useful corrective. It plays firm, it plays fast, and it rewards a player who is willing to think their way around the ground rather than simply carry every hazard through the air. Anyone tracking where golf course design in China is heading would do well to start here.