Arboretum - Slovenia

I mostly enjoyed this course set in sloping wooded territory. The other reviewers probably enjoyed it more than I did. Most of the holes were lovely, as they have described.

Signposting was a little muddled when moving from one hole to the next. For example, a sign pointing to the 7th tee betrays the fact that the tee you first come to is the 18th, which I therefore carelessly played twice. The 18th has a narrow chute to hit through and the fairway slopes sharply from left to right. It is very difficult for a slight fade to find the fairway, never mind the rough. It is a disappointing finish to an otherwise nice course.

This is a very nice course in Slovenia. Some really narrow fairways on the course, so better leave your driver in the bag and play the course with irons. Also some big elevations on the course. Greens were nice and the greenfee is really good value for money.

Driving to the course past kilometres of flat, open fields, there’s nothing to warn you of the rolling terrain that lies ahead on the Arboretum course. It’s a brilliant setting for a golf course, with fairways carved through dense woodland, meandering around lovely little natural-looking ponds.

With a name like Arboretum,you’d expect trees to play a large part in proceeding here and indeed they do, sometimes prohibitively so: there’s the occasional lone tree standing in the middle of a fairway and some of the holes are really tight, where trees have grown a little too much into the line of play.

The 5th is a great par five, plummeting down from the tee then rising up to a long narrow green. The hole following is the first par three on the card but it’s well worth waiting for, playing across a small gorge to a green that’s benched into the hill on the other side.

On the inward half, the 13th is a terrific par four that flirts with a couple of wetland areas as it doglegs right and down from tee to green and it’s followed by a great little par four which requires an uphill tee shot then a precise approach to an offset green that’s perched on top of a ridge.

Arboretum was a bit of a surprise really, as I didn’t expect to find such a well-designed course in such a wonderful natural setting so close to the capital city. This is definitely the course to play if you find yourself in Ljubljana looking for a game of golf. Jim McCann