Golden Greens

Located an hour`s drive southwest of downtown New Delhi, outside the city of Gurugram, the fairways of the Golden Greens course spread out over an expansive 275-acre property, with holes routed through the meandering dunes of the Aravalli Range. The landscape here is rather bleak and arid so this course is unlike any other you will play in the environs of the nation's capital.

Martin Hawtree was engaged to construct the course in the early 1990s and he designed a bold links-like layout dominated by the essential links golf ingredients of humps, hollows and pot bunkers. Not only that,he sculpted the fairways `to look like olive green crumpled blankets,` with dramatic shifts in elevation that reflect the contours of the natural terrain.

The challenging topography is best encapsulated at the 170-yard 16th, where the tee shot is played across broken ground to a small, elevated green surrounded by four bunkers. Even if your initial shot fails to find the target, there are options available to the right of the putting surface where a low running recovery shot can still allow a par three to be marked on the scorecard.