Original built in the 1980s but re-branded and renamed in 1999, the CTS Tycoon Golf Club in Shenzhen features an enormous clubhouse, an on-site hotel and a rather unimpressive golf facility comprised of 18 solid holes by Dana Fry and Dr. Michael Hurdzan, and 27 poor holes designed by Cynthia Dye and her DYE Designs team.

The DYE holes include 18 originals and 9 that were redesigned from the night-golf course originally built by a Japanese company. Like the earlier incarnation, the shaping on the DYE holes is both amateurish and completely over-the-top, with the bunkering arranged in an apparently random nature, and the use of lakes and heroic carries doing little to excite experienced golfers or offer novice Chinese players anything remotely strategic or interesting. Throughout the course much of the shaping is done either in peripheral areas or used to deflect from the natural shape of the land.

This is a hugely disappointing effort from Cynthia Dye (nee McGarey) and her team, who trade off the success and fame of an uncle able to balance bulk earthworks with quality holes. Here they moved enormous quantities of dirt around a fairly steep site close to the main Shenzhen reservoir, but instead of providing exciting golf all they did was create plenty of humps and lumps and lots of large, grass-faced bunkers.

For good players this isn’t an easy course, but it’s not challenging because there is usually only one plausible route to take. For beginners or modest players its worse, as a large number of bunkers are situated in spots where they will never affect good players, but will continually frustrate and delay the poor shot.

Great golf courses have a way of making the game simple for average players and difficult for good golfers, but this is the opposite – and it’s enormously long too.