| "I have aspired to
create a golfing experience that truly arouses all the senses,”
explained Bernhard Langer when unveiling his latest
– and surely the greatest – addition to his 15-strong
course design portfolio.
Admittedly the setting, nature and climate of this Indian Ocean
paradise gave the Ryder Cup captain a head start as he set about
transforming a fun-sized, 100-acre island accessible only by
a short boat trip from the east coast of Mauritius. Langer’s
own senses would certainly have been working overtime when first
encountering the sights, sounds and scents of a site he himself
describes as “beyond compare”.
Like the archetypal desert island, the One&Only Le
Touessrok Golf Course, just five minutes from the
renowned 5-star resort of One&Only Le Touessrok, is duly
blessed with the full check list of fantasy features.
Deserted white sand beaches border the turquoise sea and an
interior of swaying palms and Casuarina pines. Beneath the distant
necklace of crashing waves, the coral reef unfolds like a scene
from Finding Nemo. Such Bounty-advert clichés might pull
in the honeymooners and epicureans but they don’t automatically
guarantee a great golf course. |
Blasé as it sounds, the
tropics are overflowing with layouts whose diet of palm tree-flanked
fairways too often prove samey and superficial and lack a consistent
spark of design genius. That charge could never be levelled
here, with hole names like Lava Rock, Razorback, Tidal Pool,
Plateau Verde, Rock Ledge and Carry Me Home providing colourful
clues to the enthralling topography
and architectural challenge on offer. In his charming observations
in his book On Golf, Timothy O’Grady
suggests that great golf courses invariably pose a series of
“conundrums”, in which, “as in an allegory,
the architect is continually asking questions of the golfer”.
On this golf course, an ultra-inquisitive Langer has indeed
devised an exotic golfing puzzle, a most atypically tropical
brain-teaser that engages the player not merely over 18 holes
but long after when reflecting onthe course’s ever-changing
moods and chin-scratching technicalities. However, the course’s
former name of Ile aux Cerfs (French for ‘Island of Deer’)
is a misnomer, as there have no deer here for many years –
not that they have gone the way of the dodo (Mauritius’
most famous former resident), and there are tentative plans
to re-introduce them.
The adventure starts as soon as you amble on to the jetty at
Le Touessrok, where the choice between two five-minute ferry
trips is the first of several lay-up-orgo- for-it decisions
that lie in store.
Basking in sunshine across the bay is the impossibly beautiful
Ilot Mangénie, where you could have spent the day stretched
out under a thatched parasol while friendly beach hands named
Robinson, Cousteau and Captain Hook administer ice-cold towels,
rum punches and the finest pizzas known to man. |
