NIHI Sumba’s new Riding & Racquet Club beachfront clubhouse is elegant enough to have you packing your bags tonight.
NIHI SUmba has always walked a narrow line between internationally-acclaimed luxury retreat and remote, rustic-chic resort, but it’s also done it well. The resort’s newest arrival, the Riding & Racquet Club, only bolsters those efforts. Built around the resort’s Sandalwood ponies, the new club house overlooks an international-level tennis court, and features the kind of clubhouse bar and boutique Robinson Crusoe could only have dreamed about.
Colonial Elegance Meets Jungle Couture
The brainchild of NIHI founders James McBride (a keen polo player) and Chris Burch with creative direction from Caroline Usher and design agency UBD Global, the team behind the resort’s wider design language, the club boasts interiors in rugged teak, with thatched ceilings, a deep green cocktail bar and amber lighting, woth vintage polo mallets, antique wooden racquets and Sumbanese artifacts gracing the walls that don’t look out to the beach.
The terrace opens straight onto the Sandalwood Stables, keeping the resort’s horses — a bloodline tied to Sumba’s identity, not just its guest activities — a constant, even when you’re sipping a post-tiebreaker mai tai.
Forging Your Sumba Moments
For worldly gents routing through Bali to reach Sumba, the club adds a reason to build in an extra day, if only to round out that morning set on the tennis court, spend the afternoon watching the ponies come in off the beach, or take your rightful place at the Bakar di Kandang Kuda, a weekly open-fire feast staged under the stars.
It’s a rare instance of a resort amenity — the horses — being treated as the architecture’s focal point rather than an add-on activity, which tracks with NIHI’s broader positioning as a design-forward, conservation-minded hideaway that offers more than simply an escape from the big smoke, but a very real connection to one of Indonesia’s most remote islands.
