Lighthouse - Bulgaria
Tabiata,
9000 Balchik,
Bulgaria
+359 2 971 2219
40 miles NE of Varna airport
Welcome
Alexandra Tchoukleva
Ian Woosnam and European Golf Design
Demis Papillon
The Lighthouse course at the Lighthouse Golf Resort and Spa is one of three new golf courses to have opened along Bulgaria’s Black Sea coastline since 2008 – BlackSeaRama and Thracian Cliffs being the other two layouts. Designed by European Golf Design with Ian Woosnam as the headline-grabbing architect, the Lighthouse course has been fashioned to complement the other two Gary Player-designed courses that occupy this part of the Cape Kaliakra landscape with fairways laid out around several pockets of residential development and a routing that occasionally takes holes towards the cliff tops. Measuring 6,747 yards with a par of 71, the Lighthouse course boasts a fine set of five short holes, two on the front nine and three on the back nine. Undoubtedly, the best of these par threes is saved until last, at the 164-yard 17th, where water protects the front right hand side of the green. |
Reviews for Lighthouse
My family and I stayed in one of the Lighthouse apartments for a few days and I had the opportunity to play both the on-site course and Thracian Cliffs. The apartments were very sparsely populated, but there were steady streams of tourist buses arriving and departing from the large and well appointed hotel: many of the passengers had sets of golf clubs with them and the course was busy at times.
Lighthouse was a nice warm up to the much more spectacular and challenging Thracian Cliffs. It's a relatively open parkland resort course that is built on mostly flat terrain, which could sound concerning, but there are plenty of design elements that make the course interesting: undulations of the fairways and surrounds, doglegs, sufficient well placed bunkering, over water shots and holes that run in a number of different directions and rarely are they adjacent.
The conditioning was good and the green fees quite reasonable (€56). Best holes were likely the par 4 16th and par 3 17th as they had the main water hazard directly in play.
Well worth playing.
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The course opens with a straight away par-4 which gets you away from the clubhouse and into the round and the approach to the par-4 2nd hole needs to carry a grass hollow short and left of the green. Water is in play on five holes on the course starting at the 4th (both left and right of the fairway). My pick of best front nine hole is the short par-4 7th with a nice short approach downhill to the green. The 10th is tough par-4 with plenty of water down the right . Probably the best looking part of the course is around the 13th and 14th holes which is closest to the coast.the finish to the round is strong with water in play on the last three holes and nice variation with a par-5, par-3, par-4 combination - I would probably say the 18th is the toughest par-4 on the course.. As I mentioned, there will soon be three courses in the region; I have played two of them and also walked the fantastic looking Thracian Cliffs ..
My current golf ball ratings are.. 3 for the Lighthouse, 4 for Blacksearama and 5 for Thracian Cliffs .. I do suspect that all three courses will all move up one rating by the time I return (not too long I hope) - Obviously golf on Bulgaria's east coast will be a step into the unknown for most but with the high class accommodation and memorable golf courses on offer, I would think this is set to become very popular.
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