The Mines Resort & Golf Club

Few Malaysian courses carry quite the backstory of The Mines. Built on the site of what was once the world's largest open-cast tin mine, the course was carved from an extraordinary landscape of flooded mining pits in the early 1990s, transforming an industrial scar into one of Southeast Asia's most visually dramatic golf destinations. The result is a layout where massive lakes — the legacy of those excavated pits — dominate virtually every hole, demanding accurate, committed golf from start to finish.

Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed the course, and his routing makes full use of the water and the elevated, irregular terrain left behind by decades of mining. The fairways wind between lakes that stretch to the horizon, giving the property a sense of scale unusual for a layout this close to Kuala Lumpur. The Mines famously hosted the 1999 World Cup of Golf, cementing its status as Malaysia's most internationally recognized venue.

Seri Kembangan sits just south of the capital, making The Mines accessible as either a day trip or a full resort stay. The surrounding development has grown considerably since the 1990s, but the course itself retains the striking, otherworldly character that only its one-of-a-kind industrial origins could have produced.