I FIRST visited Keppel Land's Spring City Golf & Lake Resort near Kunming in south-west China about eight years ago.

At the time, few knew much about the place and I had been invited by Keppel to review the resort's new Jack Nicklaus Mountain Course. I returned in early 1999 to test the newer, and visually stunning, Robert Trent Jones Jr (RTJ) Lake Course.

And I was back for a third time recently with some friends, taking a four-hour direct SilkAir flight from Singapore, essentially to see how the resort was faring almost a decade after its big opening.

As investors in Bintan found out the hard way, it is one thing to start up a large resort - but quite another to keep it going successfully. Especially for start-ups in exotic, far-flung locations.

Spring City is about 60 km east of Kunming City, the capital of Yunnan province. Eight years ago, it had taken me well over an hour to get there from the airport via narrow, winding mountain roads. This time there was a spanking new three-lane highway linking Kunming to Spring City resort. The journey from the airport to the resort took about 45 minutes.

On arrival at Spring City, I was pleasantly surprised to see the resort had not just grown but had become busier than I had imagined. Despite July being the the warmest month in the region, the place was packed with golfers from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and China. It seemed everyone wanted to get a taste of what is now widely acknowledged as one of Asia's top golfing destinations.

Both the Jack Nicklaus Mountain Course and RTJ Lake Course have been consistently voted among the world's 100 best golf courses in the world by golf writers. And the RTJ Lake Course is widely regarded as the best in China.

The 500-hectare Spring City resort sits about 2,000 metres above sea level on a mountainside adjacent to Lake Yang Zong Hai. Besides the two award-winning golf courses, the resort boasts a Clubhouse Lodge with 49 well-appointed rooms (24 more will be added soon to meet demand), a Peter Senior & Gary Edwin Golf Academy, a spa (you just HAVE to try a massage), a well-stocked pro-shop and other facilities that come standard with any world-class five-star resort.

Golfers who want more exclusivity can choose to stay at one of the 200 or more beautiful villas dotting the hillside property. These were sold in three phases over the past eight years to buyers from Singapore, Hong Kong, China and other countries on a lease-back scheme.

It is easy to see why Spring City's courses are so highly rated the moment you step on the tee-boxes. The scent of the fresh pine and wild flowers greets you, while the colours and the sweeping views of the lake and forests make you want to pause to take in the scenery more often than you should.

Golfers should ideally begin by teeing off on the picturesque Jack Nicklaus Mountain Course, with its trademark elevated tee-boxes, generous but undulating fairways and huge Nicklaus-trademark bunkers. This beautiful course caters to all levels of proficiency.

The RTJ Lake Course, with its narrow sloping fairways and gusty winds, is more demanding. While the more mature Jack Nicklaus Course uses the natural undulations on the upper reaches of the hills to provide a challenging golfing experience, the RTJ Course provides a visually stunning and exhilarating ride down a rice terrace-like slope with sweeping views of the lake from every fairway.

Its signature hole has to be the Par 3 eighth. Standing on the blue Tee-box, one looks down a 45-degree gradient towards a green 172 yards below, hugged by the lake on three sides. Over-clubbing means sure water.

The rarefied air of the two mountainsides means well-struck balls travel further on both courses. Add to that the smooth fescue grass fairways, and you can easily send the golf ball some 20 to 30 metres further than you would in warm and humid Singapore.

Quite an ego-boosting experience for short hitters!

But the biggest challenge for golfers from the tropics has to be the very fast bent grass greens, which run 10.5 on the stimpmeter. Three putts can be the norm for even good golfers used to Singapore courses, where average green speeds are 8.5 to 9 on the stimpmeter.

One big draw of Spring City - especially if you are from the tropics - is its cool and invigorating temperate climate. With daily temperatures ranging from 15 to 25 Celsius, depending on the time of year, you can easily play a 36-hole round without suffering dehydration and fatigue. March-April and September-October are the best times to visit.

SilkAir flies direct from Singapore to Kunming every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. The airline also markets golf packages - flights, transfers and accommodation - which are available through leading tour operators.

Spring City Golf & Lake Resort

Where: About 60 km east of Kunming, on the north-eastern bank of Lake YangZhonghai in Yiliang. Owned by: A consortium led by Keppel Land which includes the Chinese provincial government among its minority partners. Other shareholders include Indonesia's Salim group and a Thai conglomerate.

Membership: No golf club membership for sale. But buyers of resort homes, priced at US$100,000 and above, get club membership. The first 130 units of Primrose and Magnolia Villas have been sold and a third development of about 100 Azalea units is at late-stage release.

Getting there: SilkAir flies direct three times a week from Singapore.

Other attractions: The Stone Forest: about 80 ha of limestone pillars. The Western Hill: a range of four mountains stretching 40km along the westernshore of Dianchi Lake. Jiu Xiang: a scenic resort made up of 100 large and small caves.