Spring City Golf & Lake Resort (Lake)

Overview: The Lake Course at Spring City Golf & Lake Resort is a mountain-and-water design by Robert Trent Jones Jr, set beside Lake Yangzonghai near Kunming. The course uses the steep terrain as an active part of the architecture: holes climb and descend through the hills, while the lake and its coves create changing sightlines and strategic boundaries. Its strongest moments come when elevation, water and green position work together, asking players to choose between a conservative line and a more ambitious angle. Although the setting is scenic, the design is not merely decorative. Uneven lies, shifts in perspective and the need to control distance on sloping ground give the round a clear tactical identity.

History: Spring City was established in 1998 as a two-course resort beside Yangzong Lake. The Lake Course was designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr and forms one half of the resort’s contrasting 36-hole offering; the companion Mountain Course was created by Jack Nicklaus. The Lake layout was planned to make the most of the site’s dramatic topography, with the routing moving between hillside positions and the water’s edge. Its history is therefore inseparable from the resort’s decision to treat the natural landscape as the principal design material rather than flattening the property into a conventional inland course.

Did You Know? The par-three 8th drops roughly 100 feet toward a peninsula green, while the 9th runs along the lake and the 10th crosses a cove. Those three holes form one of the clearest visual sequences at Spring City, compressing the resort’s elevation and water themes into a short stretch of the round.