Red Mountain Golf Club - Phuket

Overview: Kathu’s Red Mountain routing covers 18 holes at par 72 in Kathu, central Phuket, built across the scars of a former tin mine. Jonathan Morrow and Al Tikkanen used the site’s red rock, flooded mine pits, jungle ridges and steep elevation changes as the design material instead of flattening them away. Current course guides put the back-tee length at about 6,781 yards, although published totals vary after later hole changes. The result is a visually dramatic mountain layout where tee-shot position and angle matter as much as raw distance.

History: Red Mountain opened in 2007 during Phuket’s expansion into a major golf-travel destination. The designers’ challenge was to turn industrial excavation into a playable landscape, and the early design record shows how holes were adapted around cliffs, mine cuts and drop shots. The course has continued to evolve: recent guides note changes to four holes and different published totals, which is why this profile avoids treating every older scorecard as a current routing.

Did You Know? The course’s name is literal. The old mine left exposed red earth and rock faces that now frame fairways and greens, while former workings became water hazards. The dramatic par-three 17th, played across a deep ravine, is the clearest expression of that transformation: a piece of mining geography turned into a golf hole rather than hidden beneath conventional landscaping.