Today, there are at least a dozen clubs or courses and as many as 30 more are being planned or built, according to the country's newly formed golf association.

And once again, foreigners are heavily involved. Most golf in Vietnam is played by visitors from Japan, South Korea, Australia and, increasingly, the United States. Many Americans have also assumed the role of investors and managers.

The Dalat Palace Golf Club, Vietnam's oldest and best-known course, reopened in 1994 with a sizable infusion of money from Larry Hillblom, a founder of DHL (the "H" is for Hillblom). Hillblom, who was killed in a plane crash in 1995, also built an 18-hole course along the coast, Ocean Dunes.

Both courses are now managed by Puchalski. Like the other Americans running courses whom we spoke to, he told us that Americans were in demand because they brought expertise unavailable within Vietnam. The result is a form of golf that's both familiar and foreign.

In Da Lat, it was easy to understand what caught Hillblom's eye. The Dalat Palace course sits in the center of the small, old city, which at 5,000 feet above sea level has temperate weather year round and views on some days all the way to the coast.

We arrived during the rainy season, so the course was particularly green, squishy and empty. On our first day, we appeared around 10 a.m. at the clubhouse, an old stone mansion that looks straight out of "The Great Gatsby." After paying ($75 for 18 holes on weekends, the rate for guests at the Sofitel or Novitel hotels there, plus $25 for clubs and $10 for shoes), we asked the only other golfer in sight to join us: Kagawa, 70, a retired Exxon executive from Tokyo who was also playing in Vietnam for the first time.

The first hole was a par 3, with a soft downward slope, which gave us a little extra distance on shots otherwise hindered by the wet conditions. We all finished relatively proud, with bogeys.

As we moved along, the course became more and more intricate, even whimsical. The third hole, for example, was a sharp dogleg right, with the pin in a small valley about 100 yards below where the fairway turned. It was clearly meant to be a surprise, and a challenge. Without a soft approach shot, the ball would end up in the lake behind the green.

Kagawa was impressed. "Very beautiful," he said.

As we walked to the next hole, I asked him to compare Dalat Palace to other courses in Asia and the United States. "The courses here, and in Japan too, they are more like gardens," he said.

At the Dalat Palace, there was clearly a deep appreciation for flowers. Behind many holes, volleyball-sized peonies stood three feet high; red flowers as bright as chili peppers and luxurious multiflower displays dotted the course. The grass, because of the rain, was not in perfect shape, but that could be excused.

The course had once been among Vietnam's most popular, and during the war, American officials relished time in Da Lat. Today, signs of a more contemporary American presence are confined to the golf shirts and umbrellas for sale at the clubhouse, with words and prices in English, and the menu, which included American bar food alongside local favorites like pho, the traditional beef noodle soup.

The main hotel attached to the course, the Sofitel Dalat Palace, seemed to be aiming for a romanticized version of a French colony in the 1920s. Our room had a claw-foot tub. The main restaurant was French, and a constant stream of jazz poured into the lobby.

The building is in fact a refurbished palace of Bao Dai's, with stunning views over the lake that abuts the golf course. But the wide hallways, cavernous lobby and quiet staff outfitted like French maids added an air of formality. It was the kind of place where whispering seemed most appropriate.

We preferred Larry's Bar in the basement, named after Hillblom, because it was far less stuffy, featuring a pool table, a simpler menu and enough stone and wood for an Alpine ski lodge.

Ocean Dunes, by contrast, felt far more Floridian. Squeezed between the South China Sea and the largely unimpressive southern city of Phan Thiet, a slow, four-hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City, Ocean Dunes is essentially a renovated 1980s Russian beach hotel with a golf course out back. Tiger Woods's father, Earl, was stationed in the area during one of his two tours in Vietnam, and he called his son Tiger after a close Vietnamese friend from the area.