Golf: take a course

There is one golf club in Macau, and it's a classic to enjoy

The Macau Golf and Country Club, on the green island of Coloane, is Macauís great golfing escape. Yet unlike other courses in the PRD located outside the city center, this one, amid rolling green hills framed by the South China Sea coast, is close enough to casinos, restaurants, historic sites and shopping so that even day-trippers can take in more of the city when they come to play.

If you're planning to stay more than just one day, you can check into the Westin Resort and explore everything the city has to offer without going very far. The club provides privileges to non-member guests at the Westin Resort, and in turn, the Westin offers discounts to visiting club members, or to members of 150 associate clubs overseas.

But once you've arrived, you may not want to leave. The Westin's swimming pool with its own bar overlooking the sea and luxury spa are welcome luxuries after a day on the greens, and the Club's own Golfers Grill, Sakura Japanese restaurant, and 19th Hole members' bar offer some of the best cuisine in town.

Macau's championship golf course has won the praise of world-class professionals who come for the annual Macau Open. One of them, Steve Eubanks, a self-described "recovering golf professional" and freelance golf writer based in the United States, visited Macau to write about the event and was impressed by the "spectacular views of the South China Sea". Eubanks gave the clubís design, by architect Hiroshi Ikeda of the Aoki group, an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The club's general manager, Singapore-born Wee Peng Siong, describes it succinctly: "The golf experience here is a more complete one. We donít have the benefit of a lot of land, and the course is built on a cliff. It's not a very long golf course, so elements of nature come into play, like winds."

It's a target-styleî golf course, he explains. "If you build a golf course on land where you can use all you want, the hazards you put on the course are man-made. The hazards we have here are all natural. They're part of the terrain. The fairways are built around them. Itís more interesting and challenging for golfers."