Close to the popular tourist centre of Chengdu, Luxe Hills is a high-end private golf and residential estate renowned in China as a regular venue for Asia or OneAsia tour events. The course is part of a master-planned luxury community and was designed by Mark Hollinger from the JMP Golf Design Group.

Although the facility itself is quite impressive and the landscaping well done, the design of the golf course is mediocre at best with few outstanding elements, a lack of originality and some disappointing holes on decent pieces of ground. The biggest single issue with Luxe Hills is the bunkering and fairway strategy, which is really a lottery for most players. There are too many bunkers on many holes, and often traps are arranged to dictate lines to poor hitters but pose no questions or challenges at all to the good player. A theme throughout China. While the heavy fairway bunkering torments the weaker hitters, here good players will often just hit and hope, knowing they are either sitting pretty in an anorexic fairway or stuck in a spirit-level flat bunker with a low lip.

Each of the par threes requires an all-carry shot across water or large expanses of sand, and again there is room between the hazard and the green making them torturously difficult for poor players but relatively simple for elite golfers. They take a nice picture and are reasonably fun to play, but will struggle to appeal to those who have experienced high-quality golf elsewhere.

The same is true of the greens, which are large and full of contours, tiers and irregular ridges. Greens are set to complicate approach shots and are Luxe Hills primary defense from low scoring professionals. Like the course itself, they are unlikely to impress the well traveled visitor.