Lykia Links Golf Club

Perry Dye – son of legendary Pete Dye – has a few well known European designs to his name (Austria’s Klagenfurt-Seltenheim and San Roque (New) in Spain spring to mind) and his latest Turkish delight is right up there with the others in the top bracket.

The Links course lies within the sprawling Lykia Estate in Turkey’s Antalya region and it’s yet another in a line of fabulous 18-hole layouts to emerge from the Belek tourist area, one of Europe’s most vibrant golfing hot spots.

Actually, the course sits a little bit away from the eastern end of the “Belek golf strip”, beside a river estuary that runs into the Mediterranean, and it’s laid out over a classic links landscape, complete with natural sand dunes and rumpled fairways – ideal terrain for the first links course in the country.

The reputation of the architect’s father for designing tough tracks has rubbed off on Perry as he has fashioned a course at Lykia that offers a meaty test (in total contrast to the type of golf found at most other nearby courses) so holiday golfers – you have been warned – don’t expect a stroll in the sun here!

A massive 7,536 yards from the back pegs, Lykia Links is not just about length when it comes to presenting a serious challenge. Green complexes are guarded by deep, railway-sleepered bunkers, fairways are bordered by large waste areas and putting surfaces are generally small and sloping.

Two of the holes on the front nine (7 and 8) play round a fresh water lake but that’s as close to resort golf as you’ll find on this course. On the inward half, holes 13 to 16 are set out in the dunes along the shores of the Med and the round ends in fine style at a home hole where an enormous waste area and mounding flank either side of a fairway that leads to an upturned saucer of a green.