Boulder Hills Golf & Country Club

Donald Harradine looked at designing a golf course in Hyderabad in 1938 but it never got built when World War II intervened to halt the development. Sixty-three years later, the architect’s son, Peter Harradine, was approached with a similar request from a property developer in the United Arab Emirates and this time not even a global war would have been enough to prevent the project from going ahead.

Harradine’s greatest challenge was making the most of the monumental boulders on site – which “defy gravity, logic and modesty” – so the fairways were routed so that they wander in and around the big rocks, preserving them for posterity. Fortunately, this form of design ties in rather well with the Vastu Shastra traditional Indian system of integrating architecture with nature, enabling everybody to be pleased with the design chosen.

In Volume5 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, Tom Doak has this to say about the course: “Aptly-named Boulder Hills is part of a Dubai-funded real estate development on the growing west side of Hyderabad. It must have been expensive to build, as the fairways run the gauntlet between boulders on nearly every hole on the front nine, some in compelling spots, and other quite awkwardly in the way. The greens are pancake-flat, but for a green fee of $40, you can forgive its lack of finesse.”