Laguna Golf Phuket

Few resort courses in Southeast Asia have been rethought as thoroughly as this one. Originally opened in 1992 as the Banyan Tree Golf Course, the layout was redesigned by Nicklaus Design and relaunched in 2014 under its current name, repositioning it as a premium resort experience within the broader Laguna Phuket integrated resort complex — a sprawling development on the island's northwestern Bang Tao Bay coast that also encompasses hotels, villas, and the famous Laguna Phuket Triathlon finish line.

The course plays across a varied landscape of tropical woodland, lagoons, and water features that are anything but decorative — water comes into serious play on the majority of holes, and the lush, humid conditions mean the rough rewards precision off the tee. The Nicklaus redesign brought tighter shot values and improved conditioning to a layout that had always had strong bones, and the course now regularly ranks among Thailand's best.

Phuket's northwest is noticeably quieter than the tourist-dense south, and playing here has a genuine resort unhurriedness to it. The wet season runs roughly May through October, so the dry winter months draw the heaviest visiting golfer traffic from Europe and across Asia.