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The first pleasure to be experienced at the new Sandy Lane
complex is simply to walk into the clubhouse. Full of light,
open to cooling breezes, with polished marble everywhere,
it offers a magnificent golfing
panorama as the land in front slopes away down to the 18th,
a short hole that is visible in its entirety. In the distance
is the Caribbean; above, a vast expanse of sky. It makes
for a fantastic spectacle.
As the bar is at the front of this opensided clubhouse,
it would be tempting just to sit there and watch the golfers'
endeavours to carry the lake between tee and green, and,
if successful, combat the slope of the green itself. But
that would be to deny yourself the very real pleasures of
the preceding 17 holes.
On the course that is presently open (the next 18 comes
on stream in
November), Tom Fazio has done a good job of creating a resort
course that could, in a matter of weeks, be tightened sufficiently
for a professional tournament. It is, inevitably, a cart
course and every cart has GPS, that system which automatically
computes how far you have to the hole. In Barbados, however,
this is useful only in providing the basic fact that it
is, say, 164 yards to the pin. If the hole in question is
either up or down of the trade winds, choosing a club involves
a serious calculation, and then usually a serious revision
of that calculation before you can come to any worthwhile
conclusion.
 You
will be asked to take a caddie with your cart, and while
this may seem like overkill, it is both good fun and beneficial.
The caddies go through a 12-month training programme to
become certified, they can read the grain on the greens,
and they offer encouragement and enthusiasm when sometimes
it is desperately needed.
Two businessmen, Dermot Desmond and J.P McManus, are rumoured
to be spending $350 million on this development, which,
at first sight, seems to be mad mathematics. But if you
are also offering home sites for 100 houses, at $3.5 million
per site, then it can all become a little clearer.
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