Ria Bintan Golf Club (Ocean)

Overview: The Ocean Course at Ria Bintan Golf Club is an 18-hole, par-72 coastal layout on Bintan Island, set between tropical jungle and the South China Sea. Gary Player designed the course to use the island’s sea views, native vegetation, elevation changes and sandy ground as a connected playing landscape. The official club page lists 6,470 metres from the black tees, approximately 7,077 yards, so the directory length is updated to that current equivalent. The front and back portions do not offer the same visual experience: the jungle corridors give way to the sea at the signature stretch, where wind, exposed rock and coastal sightlines become part of the decision making.

History: Ria Bintan Golf Club was established in 1998 as part of the Bintan Resorts development, with Gary Player’s Ocean Course as its principal championship routing. The club also includes a separate nine-hole Forest Course, but the ranked directory row is the Ocean Course only. Ria Bintan has hosted regional events including the Ria Bintan Open, and the operator says the property became the first course in Indonesia to receive Audubon International Classic and Cooperative Sanctuary certification in 2009. That environmental milestone is closely connected to the course’s use of jungle, coastal ground and native landscape rather than separating golf from its island setting.

Did You Know? The club’s hole sequence gives the Ocean Course an unusually concentrated coastal finish. The South China Sea opens out at the seventh, the eighth green is surrounded by sea views on three sides, and the ninth begins from a rocky outcrop. Those holes turn the ocean from distant scenery into the clearest strategic and visual signature of the round.