Course Development
JUNE UNVEILING
AT LANHAI
T
hirty-six-hole Lanhai International
Country Club reopened its Links
Course this June following a sweeping,
12-month renovation directed by
Melbourne, Australia-based Ogilvy, Clayton,
Cocking & Mead (OCCM).
Founded in 2009 here
on Chongming, an
island in the Yangtze
River delta, Lanhai
International CC has
quickly taken its place
among the top clubs in
Asia, on the strength
of those 36 holes,
its elegant Tuscan-
style clubhouse,
and a distinguished
membership drawn from nearby Shanghai.
The club’s profile and ambitions were raised
considerably following its 2016 purchase by
the Ping An Group, one of the world’s largest
insurance conglomerates.
“We had two courses here, the Forest Course
(a Nicklaus design) and the Links Course,”
says Lanhai General Manager Jay Porter,
formerly GM at Merion Golf Club. “The Links
was by far the most popular among our
membership, accounting for 65 percent of
all rounds played. In that sense, I give the
members and our new owners a lot of credit
for renovating an already popular track, in
the service of creating a truly world-class
track. And make no mistake: That is the
expectation.”
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The weight of those expectations falls to
OCCM (www.occmgolf.com), whose on-site
activities here are directed by partner Ashley
Mead.
“This was always a big-style course in terms
of scale,” says Mead, who estimates the
OCCM team (including
Geoff Ogilvy, 2006
U.S. Open Champion)
will have spent an
extraordinary 150 days
on site during the year-
long construction term.
“But we felt the original
features didn’t do the
terrain justice. Many
of the greens and tees
felt perched on the
high points and not nestled into the dunes.
So we’ve created 18 entirely new green
sites that, in combination with bigger, more
dramatic feature elements, give golfers the
chance to play their way through the dunes,
not across the top.”
A nother big change: The renovated 18 will
reopen as a walking-only course, a decision
(rare in Asia) that necessitated the removal of
some 8 km of concrete cart paths.
“There was another important factor that
attracted our firm to this project,” Mead
continues. “We felt the original golf course,
despite the presence of several compelling
links motifs (including some fairway
contouring that was done very well), didn’t
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