If all those projects were completed, the number of courses would approach that of golf-mad South Korea, where there are close to 200. It would still fall well short of China, which has more than 300, and would be nowhere near the number in the United States, which has about 16,000 courses, or even Florida, with 1,260.

Image The Sea Links Golf and Country Club, which is built on sand dunes, pipes in water from a source nearly two miles away. Credit... Justin Mott for The New York Times

For a country that had only two courses at the end of the war in 1975 and that according to some estimates has only 5,000 golfers today, however, the increase in projects over the past four years has been explosive.

But a backlash emerged within the news media and among academics and government officials over the social and environmental costs.

In summer 2008, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung ordered a halt to new construction pending a review, and last June the government ordered the cancellation of 50 of the projects. But most of the others are well under way, to add to the country’s 13 established golf courses.

“Developers and foreign investors are saying they want to make the country a tourist destination, and to do that you need to offer more amenities like golf,” said Kurt Greve, the American general manager of the Ocean Dunes Golf Club and the Dalat Palace Golf Club. Most of those tourists would come from elsewhere in Asia, especially South Korea and Japan, where golf courses are hugely overcrowded.