NETJETS EU VOLUME 16 2021

ALL IMAGES COURTESY LES BORDES
TEEING OFF
course needed a sibling, and so they drafted in
globally acclaimed American architect Gil Hanse,
who has fashioned a stunner of a New Course,
which has just debuted as his first on the continent
and has already entered Golf.com’s Top 100.
Whereas von Hagge’s work is a memorable
manicured mélange of photographable peninsula
and island greens delimited with railroad
sleepers and framed by shallow basin bunkers
that put the emphasis on target golf, the New
Course is a fast and firm transplanted tableau
that recalls the heathland tracks of southern
England or, in Hanse’s own words, the likes of
Pine Valley, very near to his East Coast home.
BUILT ON A SANDY foundation with large waste
areas, the 7,285-yard walking-only inland links
layout has subtle elevational changes with raised
undulating greens with false backs which are large
and sometimes unreceptive to approach shots, and
menacing clusters and rows of cross-bunkering that
are disconcertingly deceptive and visually arresting
– all of it framed by vegetation such as broom,
heather and gorse that was grown and harvested
in the UK. There are plenty of risk-reward options
and, with the exception of one hole, the 18th, not a
drop of water to challenge. Yet because the course
has been designed to be played predominantly on
the ground in true links fashion, there are endless
swales, humps and bumps, and rollercoaster green
complexes framed by fescue and deep cavernous
A SPORTING HAVEN
From the hunting lodge-cumclubhouse,
top, to the par-3s of Wild
Piglet, above, and the challenges
presented by the Old and New
Courses, Les Bordes is handsomely
situated among its spectacular
wilderness surrounds
50 NetJets