Ask a golfer to name Asia’s great golf islands and you will hear Bali, Phuket, maybe Okinawa. Hainan rarely comes up, which is odd, because it has been China’s premier golf destination for more than twenty years, holds more than thirty courses, and is the island where Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy came to play. This is the trip planner we send golfers who ask us how to do it properly: which courses are worth the flight, how to string them into a week, where to sleep, and which airport to book.
Why Hainan is China’s golf island
Before anyone was talking about surfing here, there was the swing. Hainan is China’s tropical island province, and the geography does something unusual for golf: volcanic terrain in the north, ocean coastline to the east and south, so within an hour’s drive you can tee off in three completely different landscapes. The season runs year-round at 22–30°C. If you watch professional golf you have almost certainly watched a Hainan fairway without knowing it — the HSBC Champions, the Omega Mission Hills World Cup and the Volvo China Open have all been played here — and Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Gary Player have all teed it up on the island.
What makes it a trip rather than a round is that the two flagship courses sit at opposite ends of a two-hour coastal drive, with the world’s only wave pool on a tropical island in the middle. So the week has a natural shape: links on the east coast first, lava in the north to finish, and a rest day that involves warm water.
The courses to build the week around
The Dunes at Shenzhou Peninsula · Wanning
Every great golf destination has one course that justifies the flight on its own, and in Hainan it is The Dunes at Shenzhou Peninsula. Designed by Tom Weiskopf and Phil Smith and opened in 2014, it is a true coastal links: fairways threaded between natural sand dunes, bunkers that blend into native sand, and the South China Sea framing green after green. Golf Digest ranked it #2 in all of China in 2022, Forbes lists it in the top 10 in Asia, and US Golf Magazine named it Best New International Course when it opened. There is more of it than most people expect — 36 holes across the East and West layouts — and the golfers we send back tell us the West is the one to play first. It is thirty minutes from the surf resort at Riyue Bay, which is why the week starts there.
Blackstone at Mission Hills Haikou
Mission Hills Haikou is the world’s largest golf complex — ten championship courses carved out of black volcanic lava rock inside a single resort — and Blackstone is its featured course. Schmidt-Curley opened it in 2009 as a dramatic routing through lava walls and tropical scrub; Golf Magazine put it in the world top 100, Asian Golf Monthly named it Best New Course in Asia, and in 2013 Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy went head to head here. It is the bucket-list round of the island: real history, world-class design, and a landscape that exists nowhere else in golf.
Lava Fields at Mission Hills Haikou
Blackstone’s big brother next door, and the second round at Mission Hills you don’t skip. Lava Fields is the same black volcanic rock on a bigger canvas: wide fairways, enormous sand waste areas, and a layout that stretches to 7,475 yards, par 72 from the back tees. Black rock and white sand frame nearly every hole. It is ranked in China’s top 10 and Asia’s top 50, and because it sits beside Blackstone, it turns the Haikou leg into two rounds from one hotel.
Lu Hui Tou Golf Club · Sanya
If the week stretches to ten or eleven nights, Sanya adds a fourth course of a fourth kind. Lu Hui Tou, by Nelson & Haworth (2009, 7,310 yards, par 72), is draped across a headland peninsula with the South China Sea on one side and a green mountain ridge on the other, and the elevation changes give every approach a different angle. Pair the round with a stay at Rosewood Sanya and the polished island day arranges itself — this is the leg our Luxury tier ends on.
One honest footnote: Shanqin Bay, the Coore & Crenshaw course in Lingshui once ranked No. 8 in the world by Golf Digest, is the most exclusive private club in Asia. It lists no tee times and takes no walk-ins, and we are not accepting new applications for it at the moment. Plan the week around the courses you can actually play.
Seven nights, day by day
This is the Hainan golf week we run most often: three nights at Riyue Bay for The Dunes, then north to Haikou for the two Mission Hills courses, flying out of Haikou. It is the shape of the Premium tier of our Surf & Golf Retreat; drop the surfing and it is the pure golf version.
The Hainan golf week at a glance · 7 nights, 4 rounds
Where to stay on a Hainan golf trip
Two bases, one per end of the island. On the east coast the pick is UECHAO Hotel Riyuebay, the resort built inside the surf-park grounds: rooms, breakfast hall, gym, lap pool and rooftop lounge on one property, the beach on the other side of it, and The Dunes thirty minutes up the road. Golfers travelling as a group tend to take the Ocean & Pool View rooms on the upper floors; the room-by-room guide has the rest. In Haikou the natural base is the Ritz-Carlton at Mission Hills, which puts both lava courses at the door. For the Sanya extension it is Rosewood Sanya, a short drive from Lu Hui Tou.
The rest day that isn’t: the wave pool
Most golf weeks have a dead day in the middle. This one has the PerfectSwell® surf pool a minute from the room at Riyue Bay — around twenty wave settings, from a gentle beginner roller to a barrel, in warm water with no crowd. A coached surf session on a soft-top board gets a complete first-timer standing up on the day; our beginner’s guide explains why a repeating wave teaches faster than the ocean. In the cooler months Riyue Bay’s ocean break runs a short walk from the pool deck too. And for the partner who does not golf, the pool is the reason the trip works — the couples’ guide covers that version.
If nobody in the group wants to get wet, the inland day is just as good: Xinglong coffee plantations, a Li village with two thousand years of island culture, rainforest waterfalls and the hot springs Xinglong is known for.
Getting there, getting in, and what we arrange
Fly into Haikou (HAK) if Mission Hills is on the list — Blackstone and Lava Fields are close to the airport, so Haikou is the natural last stop — or Sanya (SYX) for a trip that starts or ends at Lu Hui Tou. Sydney and Melbourne fly direct to Haikou; Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul connect to both airports. Riyue Bay sits between the two, about two hours from Haikou and an hour from Sanya. Hainan runs its own 30-day visa-free entry for passport holders from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada and many other countries, so most golfers need no paperwork; the visa-free guide has the detail and the getting here guide has every route.
Once you are on the ground, all you do is show up. Every trip comes with tee times confirmed before you land, private transport between the resort and each course with room for the golf bags, English-speaking caddies, and clubs if you would rather not fly with your own. Handicaps, group size and extra rounds all go into the plan.
How to book it
For golf with surfing in the week, start with the Surf & Golf Retreat: Essential is five nights in Wanning with two rounds at The Dunes, Premium adds Haikou with the Ritz-Carlton and Blackstone, and Luxury runs eleven nights across three cities with Rosewood Sanya, a yacht day and Lu Hui Tou. For a pure golf trip, send your dates, group size, handicaps and home city through the golf inquiry, or write to hello@surfchina.co (WhatsApp +8613893402173), and you get back one itinerary with every round already lined up. The golf page has the full island; the rest of the planning lives in the journal.
