Nigel B. Douglas

Nigel B. Douglas is an Australian golf course architect whose working ground has been Malaysia. His full name is Nigel Brian Douglas. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and is principal and lead architect of his own practice, Douglas Golf Design. By the firm’s profile he has worked internationally in golf course design since 1994 and has been involved in a great many projects across Asia and Australia. The practice keeps two offices: the head office in Kuala Lumpur, and an Australian branch opened in 1998 at Maryborough, Victoria, which backs up the international projects and handles work within Australia.

The firm sets out its thinking as building courses that are interesting, strategically playable and, above all, of high quality. It points to detailed drawings and specifications, construction that proceeds in proper order, maintenance that stays manageable once the course is open, and the architect’s own regular presence on site to make the calls, as the means by which that quality is held.

His record is concentrated in Malaysia. Among the courses the firm lists are Seri Selangor Golf Club near Kuala Lumpur, floodlit for night play and described by the practice as the only true public course in Malaysia; Kota Permai Golf & Country Club and Lake Kenyir Golf Resort, on which he is credited alongside Ross Watson; the small nine-hole Valencia Golf Club; and Willows Golf Club at Townsville in Queensland, Australia, which he renovated in 2002. At Kelab Golf Sarawak in Kuching he rebuilt eighteen of the thirty-six holes outright in 2002, re-routing every hole and renewing greens, tees, bunkers and turf throughout. Beyond that, the Malaysian tourism board’s golf guide records that he rebuilt all the bunkers and greens at Royal Perak Golf Club in Ipoh, and that from 2018 he handled the reworking of Penang Golf Resort — a Graham Marsh design from 1994 — from thirty-six holes down to eighteen. More recently he has worked outside Malaysia as well, taking part in the design of the nine-hole Pine Hills in Islamabad, Pakistan, with the local developer Building Wonders.

Alongside the practice, he published a book in 2004 with the British publisher Authors OnLine, Golf Course Design: Modern Day Issues and Experiences. Running to a little over two hundred pages with photographs and diagrams, it answers the questions that club managers, course superintendents, committees, developers and players had put to him again and again, drawing on his first ten years in practice. Its aim is to set out plainly how a modern golf course is actually built, with the industry’s usual overstatement stripped away. In it Douglas argues that what a good course needs most is not money alone, but that everyone involved should pursue quality in the same way.

Two of the courses on GoGolf are his, both in Malaysia. Kota Seriemas Golf & Country Club at Nilai in Negeri Sembilan is a public championship course about twenty minutes by car from Kuala Lumpur International Airport: eighteen holes, par 72, 6,313 metres from the black tees. It is landscaped on the theme Colours of the Forest, with more than forty species of flowering tree planted hole by hole, and a colonial-style clubhouse standing at the end of an avenue of trees. Asian Development Tour events have been played there. Austin Heights Golf and Hotel Resort at Johor Bahru, the former Austin Hills Country Club, was built on hill country left largely as it was found. The Malaysian tourism board’s guide points to the greens set between the hills, the three-tier greens that are the club’s signature, and the scale of the undulation as the source of its difficulty. It is eighteen holes, par 72, and GolfPass records it as a Douglas design from 1995.

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.

• Austin Heights Golf and Hotel Resort (Johor, Malaysia) — a par 72 that works with the hill country as it found it. Known for its three-tier greens
• Kota Seriemas Golf and Country Club (Nilai, Malaysia) — opened 2016, a par 72 of 6,313 metres. Landscaped on the theme Colours of the Forest

See the other golf course architects here.