Cannes-Mandelieu (Old)

Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia founded one of the oldest golfing layouts in France, the Old course at Cannes-Mandelieu in 1891. Subsequently altered by Harry Colt, the layout here is the doyen of golf courses in the region, a venerable old institution that has stood the test of time superbly well.

“The sea is quite close at hand,” wrote Bernard Darwin in an article for The Times in 1913, republished in 2015 by Dormy House Press, titled: The Riviera Golf Courses, “although we have comparatively few glimpses of it during the round… We might legitimately wish for a little more sea, but that is the only possible complaint, for there is every other conceivable form of loveliness… there is a river, and there are pine trees – not stupid little Christmas trees, but beautiful, shapely and spreading. And all these pretty things are so arranged, as if by a benevolent kaleidoscope, that we see now one of them and now another as we move from glade to glade in the woods.”

The Old course is laid out on a flat landscape, close to where the River Siagne meets the sea, and the fairways weave through a small forest of Mediterranean parasol pine trees. Unusually, once golfers have completed the opening two holes, they use a small pontoon ferry beside the railway bridge to access the next ten holes across the river before returning by the same means to complete the round at holes 13 to18.

The course is not that long, measuring 6,319 yards from the back tees, but the tree-lined, doglegged fairways of the Old lead to subtly sloping greens protected by trademark Colt bunkers where low scoring is never guaranteed, despite a low slope rating for the course that might indicate otherwise.