Nelson & Haworth

Nelson & Haworth Golf Course Architects is a golf course design practice that works mainly in Asia. Its starting point was 1987, when Robin Nelson set up Nelson & Wright in Hawaii, at that stage the golf arm of the Hawaiian design and engineering firm Belt Collins. At the beginning of 2000 Nelson, Neil Haworth and Brett Mogg bought out the Belt Collins stake and went independent, changing the name to the present Nelson & Haworth. The offices are in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The founder, Robin Nelson (1951–2012), started in design in 1973 under Robert Muir Graves, and in Asia also worked alongside Ronald Fream. He joined Belt Collins in 1982 to start its golf division and moved to Hawaii in 1983. He built a long line of resort courses, Mauna Lani among them, and is sometimes described as the architect of more courses in Hawaii than anyone else. In 2000 Boardroom magazine named him Golf Course Architect of the Year. He died on November 19, 2012 of motor neurone disease (ALS). Haworth and Mogg, who were left to carry on, chose to leave the name of the firm as it stood out of respect for their partner.

Neil Haworth (1961–2024) came from Edmonton, Alberta in Canada and took a degree in landscape architecture at the University of Guelph in Ontario. He joined the Canadian practice Graham Cooke and Associates in 1985, and in 1990 moved to Singapore to open the Asian office of Nelson & Wright. From 2000 he was chairman of Nelson & Haworth. Shenzhen Golf Club in China, Sheshan International Golf Club outside Shanghai, known as the venue of the HSBC Champions, and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, built at altitude in Yunnan, are among his best-known work. At its height the firm is said to have designed roughly one in ten of the courses built in China. Haworth died of pancreatic cancer in Ottawa, Canada on June 17, 2024 at the age of 63, and Brett Mogg, the Australian who joined the Singapore office in 1992, is now the remaining partner.

The idea the practice has always worked to is a course that sits lightly on the land, and it is well known for taking both the terrain it is given and elements rooted in the local culture into its layouts. Two of the courses listed on GoGolf involved the firm: Bali National Golf Club in Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club in Malaysia. Bali National Golf Club at Nusa Dua on Bali is a complete rebuild of a course that opened in 1988, and it reopened in March 2014. The layout runs through three different kinds of ground — the rock of the hillside, coconut groves and the shore — and walls of local stone laid by hand stand beside the fairways and the tees. Neither of these two courses is currently open for booking through GoGolf; they appear on the site as information pages only.

Courses listed for information only

The following two courses are not currently open for booking through GoGolf. They appear on the site as information pages only.

• Bali National Golf Club (Bali, Indonesia) — a complete rebuild of a course opened in 1988, reopened in March 2014. Named the best renovated course in Asia-Pacific
• Kuala Lumpur Golf & Country Club (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) — formerly TPC Kuala Lumpur. Its predecessor Nelson & Wright designed both 18-hole courses in the early 1990s

See the other golf course architects here.