Keppel Club Sime Course

Overview: Keppel Club’s Sime Course is an 18-hole layout beside MacRitchie Reservoir, where mature greenery and changing ground levels give the round a surprisingly secluded character for central Singapore. The selected blue-tee reference is par 72 and 6,474 yards. Phil Jacobs’s redesign uses subtle doglegs, elevation changes and revetted bunkers to make position important without turning the course into a purely punitive test. The front nine moves away from the clubhouse toward Lornie Road, while the back nine returns through a landscape closely connected to the neighbouring Bukit golf property.

History: Sime is a new chapter in the long history of Keppel Club, whose roots reach back to 1904. The current course was upgraded by Phil Jacobs in 2022, with larger tees and putting surfaces and a distinctive revetted-bunker treatment. It officially opened for play in March 2023 under Keppel Club’s hybrid operating model. That history should not be confused with the former Keppel course at Bukit Chermin: the directory identity here is the current Sime Road course managed by Keppel Club.

Did You Know? The course is named after John M. Sime, an early figure in Singapore golf and a former chairman of Keppel Club. One of Sime’s unusual architectural features is that the second nine intertwines with the SICC Bukit course, creating a close visual relationship between two separate directory identities. The deep, revetted bunker walls are another signature: they give a traditional look to a modern public-facing course and make recovery shots especially demanding.