Karen

Karen Country Club is located close to Karen Blixen’s house, which is now a museum dedicated to the late Danish author whose memoir, Out of Africa, was her most famous work.

Karen Country Club was founded in 1937, the same year that Out of Africa was published and the golf course is a veritable beauty, often bracketed as Kenya’s prettiest course. The course is routed across Blixen's former coffee plantation in the colonial suburb of Karen amongst a kaleidoscope of flowering shrubs and plants. Karen is certainly as pretty as a picture.

Golfers worldwide had a chance to sample the delights of the Karen course in 1969 when it was used as the venue for a triangular match between Roberto DeVicenzo, Bert Yancey and Tony Jacklin during the popular “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf” series of televised challenge matches. The club has also recently played host to the Kenya Open.

The course came about thanks to the hard work of an energetic young banker named Remy Martin who acquired the land, set up the company to construct the holes and developed the real estate. Of particular importance to investors, greens were made of grass instead of oiled sand putting surfaces, known as browns.

Author Geoffrey Giles, in this edited extract from the book Golf Courses of the World, writes: “Karen’s golf course is as pretty as a picture, its flourishing wildlife encouraged by an active policy of nature and wetlands conservation and promotion. Everywhere there is colour and beauty. There is also considerable variety in the nature of the golfing challenges.

The course retains the layout it has had for many years, and still plays to more or less the same length it did over 30 years ago. It has not needed to be lengthened inordinately to withstand the onslaught of today’s young professionals. All that has been done is to drop par from 72 to 71 with one of the members’ par 5s (the 3rd) being played as a tournament par 4.”

Host to the Kenya Open (a European Challenge Tour event) between 2004 and 2008 then from 2013 to 2016, Karen Country Club is a testing layout that stretches out to almost 6,900 yards from the tips with par set at 71. Karen is a true favourite for many golfers visiting Kenya and the comfortable clubhouse is a perfect place to relax after a thoroughly enjoyable round.