Chohei Miyazawa

Chohei Miyazawa, born in 1932 and died in 2004, was a Japanese golf course architect; the membership roll of the Japanese Society of Golf Course Architects gives those dates. His working life in golf began not with design but with course maintenance. He is said to have joined Tokyu around 1955, when Noboru Gotoh, the second head of the group, opened a nine-hole course at Kinuta in Tokyo, and to have started out as its greenkeeper.

His first design work came in 1971, when Gotoh laid out the basic design of the Three Hundred Club and Miyazawa took on the ground around the greens. He was close to Seiichi Inoue, one of Japan’s leading architects, and is remembered as the man who carried Inoue’s thinking and his way of working forward. Nikko Country Club, Inoue’s best-known course, describes Miyazawa as Inoue’s assistant and as the man said to have inherited his design philosophy more fully than anyone; in 2005 his drawings for all eighteen holes were presented to the club from his estate. He later served as vice chairman of the Japanese Society of Golf Course Architects.

Because he was a Tokyu man, many of the courses he handled were Tokyu’s: Tokyu Seven Hundred Club, Katsuura Tokyu Golf Course, Omigawa Tokyu Golf Club, Tateshina Tokyu Golf Course, Aso Tokyu Golf Club and Oita Tokyu Golf Club among them. In 1977 Gotoh entrusted him with the development of a new course at the foot of Mount Fuji, which became the Five Hundred Club. By the club’s records Miyazawa set three conditions for it: that players of every standard, from beginner to expert, should be able to enjoy it according to their own game; that it should be a championship course fit to hold professional events; and that it should have dignity and beauty as a course. He had come out of horticulture, and he kept up trials of turf varieties, planting sample saplings about the course and recording how they grew. Masaharu Sugimoto, an architect who trained under him at Tokyu Green System, recalls a man who spent the day out on site, sat in meetings late into the night and was back at his drawings by five in the morning, and who held above all to the line that a golf course is only judged fifty years after it is built.

His first work abroad was Starts Guam Golf Resort, which opened in December 1987. Anyang Country Club in South Korea, The Royal Golf and Country Club in Thailand (1993) and the course at Dago in Indonesia followed, his work running from East Asia through to Southeast Asia.

Two of the courses on GoGolf are his, one in Thailand and one in Indonesia, and both can be booked through GoGolf. The Royal Golf and Country Club, in Samut Prakan province outside Bangkok, opened in 1993: eighteen holes, par 72, 7,231 yards. Ponds come into play across its flat fairways and quick greens add to the difficulty of what is a championship layout. Dago Heritage 1917 Golf Course is among the oldest courses in Indonesia, begun as nine holes in 1917 under Dutch rule; Miyazawa designed the new layout when it was extended to eighteen holes in 1994. It is a par 70 spread over slopes between 950 and 1,065 metres above sea level in the north of Bandung, the front nine dropping into the valley and the back nine climbing back towards the clubhouse.

Miyazawa courses you can book on GoGolf

• The Royal Golf and Country Club (near Bangkok, Thailand) — opened 1993, a par 72 of 7,231 yards. A flat championship course laced with water
• Dago Heritage 1917 Golf Course (Bandung, Indonesia) — a veteran course opened in 1917; Miyazawa designed the 1994 extension to eighteen holes. Par 70, at 950–1,065 metres above sea level

Tee times and rates for a given day can be checked on each course page or in the GoGolf app.

See the other golf course architects here.