Riverdale Golf Club is one of a few excellent Bangkok golf courses. Jonathan Morrow and Al Tikkanen designed and like Red Mountain, their other high-profile Phuket golf course, Riverdale makes good use of intelligent routing and elevation changes. Riverdale may not at first glance look the most menacing test of golf. However, its all an illusion. 

The landscape includes several large lakes which were dredged to create the hills that surround the golf course and frame most of the holes. Beyond the perimeter, though there's not much to look at;  factories and small villages dominate. However, from opening tee-shot to the gently sloping downhill opener, the challenges and considerable charm of these immaculately groomed links will quickly assert themselves.

Aside from its excellent conditioning and challenges, the real joy of Riverdale Golf Club lies in its beautiful interplay of gently rolling fairways, many small reed-lined lakes, raised greens, excellent bunkering, and large hills that break-up some of the layout's inherent openness.

After negotiating many immaculate, subtly breaking greens and hopefully coming through the 18 holes with scorecard relatively intact, enjoy cool refreshments at the contemporarily styled clubhouse which overlooks the 10th and 18th holes. Elegant locker rooms provide for excellent changing facilities characteristic of a 5-star private members golf club.

Insiders Tip: Ask to play the back nine first. Then, play the best three holes towards the end of the round. The signature par-5 6th hole requires two near perfect shots to get on in regulation. The dogleg par-4 7th is a drivable hole.  The twin-green par-3 8th includes a water-protected island or postage-stamp with pot bunker.  A good game may already get a bit of a mauling here. If not, save some strength for these three great ‘finishing’ holes to end the round on a high note.