Taiwan Golf & Country Club, Tamsui

Taiwan's first golf course was laid out in 1918 on the low hills beside the old fort at Tamsui, where the river meets the strait, and the club was founded on 1 June 1919, its members mostly the Japanese of Tamsui and Taipei. It began with six holes and reached eighteen in 1929. It has been rebuilt more than once, through the Japanese period, the postwar years and the decades when the U.S. military advisory group used it, and Taiwanese golfers still call it the Old Tamsui course.

The land is public and the club is a non-profit foundation, which is why it has outlived many private courses. The Taiwan Masters has been played here since 1987. It is par 72, and its character is the wind: the club's own hole guide says the monsoon always blows the ball left, and its long par five plays out towards the river mouth and Guanyin Mountain. Hundred-year-old trees line the fairways.