Mission Hills Country Club

Overview: Mission Hills Country Club sits in the Chichibu mountains of Saitama Prefecture, where Pete Dye’s 18-hole design uses a steep, forested setting as its main strategic material. The course is classified as mountain golf, and its changing elevation, sloping ground and narrow corridors make the line from tee to green more important than a simple attempt to overpower the course. Water and shaped targets add definition to the holes without disguising the rugged character of the site.

History: The club opened on 10 October 1994 at the Kunikami site in Minano, Saitama. Pete Dye designed the course, which measures 6,630 yards and plays to par 72 from the published back markers. The official club profile presents Mission Hills as a mountain course with a strong target-golf identity, while the separate designer page records Dye’s role. Its hotel and cottage development forms part of the same mountain destination, but the course remains the central idea of the property.

Did You Know? The official course data gives Mission Hills a course rating of 74.0, a useful clue to how the mountain terrain influences scoring. The course is also unusually easy to identify from its address: it is in the Chichibu district of Saitama rather than at one of the unrelated Mission Hills resorts in China or California.