Bintan Lagoon Resort & Golf Club (Ian Baker)

Overview: The Ian Baker-Finch Woodlands Course is one of two separate 18-hole layouts at Bintan Lagoon Resort on Bintan Island, reached through the golf-travel network linking Singapore and the Riau Islands. It is a par-72 resort course of approximately 6,792 yards, designed by Ian Baker-Finch. The routing moves through dense rainforest and varied ground, with more elevation change and tighter tee shots than the resort’s open Sea View companion. Its water is present but secondary to the woodland setting and the need to find the right side of the fairway.

History: The Woodlands Course was developed as part of Bintan Lagoon’s paired resort golf offering in the mid-1990s. Top100GolfCourses records the two courses as first unveiled in 1997, while other references use 1996 for the Woodlands course, so the profile uses 1997 as the paired-resort marker. Ian Baker-Finch’s design gives the course its own identity within the facility, rather than treating it as a second nine of the Jack Nicklaus Sea View Course. Current destination sources continue to describe both as 18-hole championship courses.

Did You Know? The eighth hole is a downhill par 5 of about 526 yards from the back tees, with sand, water and a lone specimen tree influencing the line from tee to green. The 13th, known as “beauty and the beast,” is another demanding par 5. Those named holes show why the Woodlands course is remembered for changing elevation and forest strategy rather than simply for its resort setting.