Siam Country Club Plantation is the bold modern sibling at Thailand’s most storied golf club — 27 holes of Schmidt-Curley drama draped over the hills behind Pattaya, with long views to the Gulf of Thailand and some of the deepest bunkering in the country. Where the neighbouring Siam Country Club Old Course trades on history and treacherous greens, Plantation trades on scale and spectacle. For most visiting golfers it is the other half of a non-negotiable Pattaya double-header.
This profile covers the three nines and how they combine, the course’s one — and only one — Honda LPGA Thailand year, the holes and the famous triple green worth knowing about in advance, and the practical rules (mandatory carts included) that make a Siam round run differently from most Thai courses.
The course itself
Plantation opened in 2008, designed by Schmidt-Curley Design — the firm of Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley, whose fingerprints are on many of Asia’s biggest modern golf projects. It was built alongside the renovation of the Old Course, on former plantation land (the club says pineapple; other references add tapioca); the three nine-hole loops are named for plantation crops: Sugar Cane, Tapioca and Pineapple.
Each nine plays to par 36, so any 18-hole pairing is a par 72. From the championship tees, the club’s published scorecards give:
| Nine | Par | Yardage (back tees) |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar Cane | 36 | 3,671 |
| Tapioca | 36 | 3,766 |
| Pineapple | 36 | 3,652 |
That puts the 18-hole combinations between roughly 7,320 and 7,440 yards from the tips — genuine championship length — and the club lists a course rating of 76.3 with a slope of 143 (tee combination unstated). Nobody is making you play from there, and unless you carry a low single-figure handicap you shouldn’t: the forward and middle tees turn a brute into a very playable, very scenic day.
The character is consistent across all three loops: sweeping elevation change, ridgeline holes with panoramic views toward the Gulf, wide fairways cut through the old plantation terrain, and deep, sculpted bunkering that punishes the timid line and the greedy one alike. Conditioning has been a Siam Country Club calling card for years, and Plantation’s presentation is generally on par with anything in the Pattaya region.
One week in the spotlight: the tournament record
Here is the detail people most often get wrong, so let’s be precise. The Honda LPGA Thailand — the LPGA Tour’s annual Thailand stop — has been staged at Siam Country Club since 2007, but its home is the Old Course. Plantation hosted the event exactly once: the 2009 edition, won by Lorena Ochoa in the closing stretch of her extraordinary career, played over a composite of the Pineapple and Tapioca nines. From 2010 the tournament returned to the Old Course and has stayed there. If a tour operator tells you Plantation is “the LPGA course,” that’s a stretch — it’s the course the LPGA visited once.
Plantation’s other headline week came in 2015, when it hosted the Thailand Open, co-sanctioned by the Japan Golf Tour and the OneAsia Tour, again using the Pineapple and Tapioca loops. So the pedigree is real, just concentrated — and it means the everyday guest is playing genuine tournament-tested ground.
The holes worth knowing
The feature everyone remembers is the triple green — a single contiguous putting surface of more than 20,000 square feet shared by the Tapioca’s par-3 7th and the Pineapple’s 4th and 9th holes, widely cited as Asia’s first. The clubhouse restaurant looks straight down onto it, which tells you how central it is to the property’s identity. Standing on one green while another group putts out thirty yards away on the “same” surface is a genuine novelty, even for well-travelled golfers.
The Sugar Cane loop holds the most dramatic individual holes, and the club itself points to two:
- Sugar Cane 6th, par 3 — 242 yards from the tips, plunging steeply downhill into a natural amphitheatre. From the forward tees it’s a mid-iron with one of the best backdrops in Thai golf; from the back it’s a full-blooded long iron or wood with the drop doing some of the work.
- Sugar Cane 9th, par 4 — 472 yards from the back, flanked by water and finishing at a towering, elevated green complex. A proper closing examination for the loop.
The Sugar Cane 5th, a par 5 listed just under 570 yards on the club’s current card (some course guides quote it closer to 600), is the strategic centrepiece: a split fairway strewn with bunkers — course-architecture references count over two dozen — leading to a raised, two-tier green. Pick your side off the tee and commit.
Location and getting there
Plantation sits directly alongside the Old Course on Siam Country Club Road, in the hills of the Pong area east of Pattaya, Chonburi province. It shares the estate with the club’s two younger layouts, Waterside (2014) and Rolling Hills (2020), making this a four-course, 81-hole property — the densest concentration of quality golf in the region.
From Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK), the drive down Motorway 7 takes roughly 90 minutes in normal traffic — the club quotes the same figure — which makes Plantation entirely feasible as a first or last round of a Pattaya-based trip. From central Pattaya it’s a 20–25 minute run up Siam Country Club Road. There’s no public transport worth considering; arrange a car through your hotel or a golf transfer.
Practical notes
Siam Country Club runs a stricter operation than most Thai clubs, and two rules catch first-timers out. Caddies are mandatory for every player — standard in Thailand, and Siam’s caddies are among the most experienced in the country. Less standard: carts are also mandatory, one per golfer, no sharing, and they are driven by your caddie, moving to cart-path-only after heavy rain. Plantation’s elevation changes mean you wouldn’t want to walk it anyway, but budget accordingly and read our guide to the Thai caddie system and tipping etiquette before you go.
Green fees sit at the premium end of the Pattaya market — as they do across all four Siam courses — with the usual gap between weekday and weekend rates (verify current rates with the club or your booking agent before you travel). Demand is heavy in the November–February high season, when the course’s exposed, elevated holes are at their best in the cooler air; see our guide to the best time to play golf in Thailand for the seasonal trade-offs. Facilities are comprehensive: a full clubhouse with lockers and showers, a pro shop, a natural-grass driving range with putting and chipping areas, and the restaurant above the triple green.
For higher handicappers, Plantation is more forgiving than its rating suggests if you tee it forward — the fairways are generous — but the deep bunkering and long carries from the back tees can make it a grind from the wrong boxes. Be honest about your game when you choose your tees.
Is it right for your trip?
Play it if you’re in Pattaya for golf at all. Plantation and the Old Course are complementary rather than interchangeable — the Old is subtle, historic and green-defended; Plantation is big, visual and bunker-defended — and playing both is the whole point of staying on this side of the gulf. If you only have one Siam round in you, purists and tournament-history buffs should take the Old; golfers who want spectacle, elevation and photographs should take Plantation.
Skip it, or at least de-prioritise it, if you’re on a tight budget — Pattaya has genuinely good golf for much less, and the premium here is real — or if you strongly prefer walking, since the cart rule removes that option entirely. And if bunkers ruin your day, be warned: this course has a lot of sand and no interest in hiding it.
For the wider picture, our Pattaya golf guide covers the full local roster — including the cliffside spectacle of Chee Chan Golf Resort, the tournament-grade Laem Chabang International Country Club and the 36 holes of Burapha Golf Club — while the Golf in Thailand hub has everything you need to build the rest of the trip around it.