Cannes-Mougins

Located just a few miles inland from the famous Promenande de la Croisette in Cannes, the fairways of the Cannes Mougins Golf & Country Club nestle in the foothills of the Southern Alps, close to the forested Valmasque Nature Park.

Formed in 1923, the club embarked on an ambitious plan to remodel the golf course in the late 1970s, calling in the design partnership of Peter Alliss and Dave Thomas to upgrade the layout.

This renovation led to the club establishing the Cannes Open in 1980, a tournament that was incorporated into the European Tour schedule between 1984 and 1994, then again in 2001 as a one-off event.

Notable winners down the years include Major champions such as Greg Norman (1983), Seve Ballesteros (1987) and Ian Woosnam (1994) and two of Zimbabwean Mark McNulty’s sixteen European Tour victories were also claimed here, in 1988 and 1990.

The course plays long, though fairways are wide and greens are generally large and subtly contoured. Feature holes include the 4th, which doglegs left and slightly uphill to a raised green, and the downhill 17th, where the putting surface lies beyond a threatening pond.

In 2015, Tom Mackenzie was called in to extensively renovate the course, refurbishing 25 fairway and 26 greenside bunkers, using capillary concrete – a highly porous but water retentive cement and polymer bonded mix – to re-line the sand traps.

The architect also reconstructed the greens at the 11th, 14th and 17th holes as part of an enterprising improvement project that could well see the course at Cannes Mougins steal the limelight in French golfing circles once again.