Gassan Marina Golf Course

The third of the Gassan Golf courses, as they build their world of golf in Chiang Mai. Gassan Marina unsurprisingly has a lot of water, with the course circling a massive lake overlooked by an impressive Arabic club house. The course is very new, so we took a group to assess its potential. Let’s start with the good things at Marina. The clubhouse is true to the Gassan style as like all their courses it is very impressive, with all the luxury one could desire. Banqueting hall, veranda overlooking the course and even a Turkish bath in the locker room (complete with sauna and steam room). The high quality service is mirrored out on the course with well placed drinks stops providing refreshment every few holes. So, if you come to a golf course to have a drink and enjoy the view, then Marina won’t let you down.

Gassan Marina – Impressive Club House

Marina is located close to Lake City, and it has a similar feel. The main advantage Marina has over Lake City is the driving range allowing you to warm up before going out onto the course. Admittedly the course is very new, which means that the hard and crusty greens, the mid fairway GUR, dirty lakes and the unfinished bunkers can all be forgiven. Hopefully in time some of these problems will be ironed out – as after 2 years they are (slowly) at Lake City. Once the conditioning improves, and the surroundings beautified, then the course will be different – so we will maybe return in 12 months or so. The thing that won’t change though, is the layout and that is perhaps the biggest weakness.

Layout

Gassan Marina is a long course, so perhaps if you are a big hitter who likes to ‘let it rip’, then it might suit your game. The fairways are wide, with few trees to be stuck behind. Every non-par-3 hole requires a driver off the tee even from the longest hitters, and with the wide fairways, you can really hit it. Every hole on the course is straight. All the par 5′s are over 600 yards from the back tees, and little shorter from the ladies tees. Given the length of the course, many challenges come from hitting long iron approaches towards greens surrounded by bunkers. The course therefore doesn’t have something to offer all players. A further criticism of the course is that the front and back nine are repetitively mirror images of each other, running parallel with each other – out and back, out and back.

Other Comments

Name : Paul

This is a golf course not to go back to! That is if you like to play golf. But it is a long walk with no shade from any trees and a beautifull view. For golfers it is BORING. Lucky that the staff is friendly helpfull but the only real positive thing is that the watering holes are near the par-3′s so you can let faster players pass in comfort. What is also nice is that you will not have to repair a pitchmark, the greens are so hard that you dont need to bother of stepping on ones puttingline you will not be able to dent it. It is all together an example how not to build a golfcourse.

Name : Sam

Positives: Nice clubhouse. Drink stops well positioned. Negs: Course design extremely bland. Lacks character–not one distinctive hole as the par’s 3, 4, and 5 are almost duplicates. Very straight course with wide fairways, so a bombers course. All this may be acceptable if the course was in great shape. When we played it, around June 07 timeframe, it was in horrible shape. Fairways and greens rock hard, with grass missing in various spots. Most of the bunkers were more like waste areas. The greens in particular are reminiscent of how Lake City (another Gassan course) used to be but at Lake, it was replaced due to players complaints. Why in God’s name would Gassan do the same thing at Marina, knowing that it was a disaster at Lake? Will not return until course condition improves and the course offers special green-fee rates. Don’t suppose there\’s much they can do with the design at this point.