Michlifen Golf & Country Club

Nicklaus Design announced the opening of the 18-hole layout at Michlifen Golf and Country Club, a Jack Nicklaus Signature Course, in the late summer of 2018. Construction on the project had actually started four years earlier and it opened in a blaze of publicity with the “Coupe du Trone / King’s Trophy” tournament presented by the Moroccan Golf Federation.

Situated close to the small mountain town of Ifrane, known as “Little Switzerland” for its Alpine architecture, the course sits at an altitude of five and a half thousand feet above sea level within the stunning Middle Atlas Mountain Region of Morocco, between Fez and Meknes. The surrounding mountain landscape is draped with evergreen and cedar forests, providing a dramatic backdrop for the golf course.

Senior Nicklaus Design Associate Dirk Bouts told us: “I have been fortunate to work closely with Jack on numerous projects over my twenty-eight years with Nicklaus Design. This is a truly special course in a spectacular setting – a course that sets the standard in the region that people will enjoy for both its challenge and its beauty.”

With the combination of high elevation and a cooler climate, the agronomy team at Nicklaus Design chose cool-season grasses for the Michlifen course; creeping bentgrass for the tees and greens, Kentucky bluegrass for sand-capped fairways and rough, with some fescue and native grasses used in more peripheral areas.

“With a cold and wet climate during the winter, the sand capping of fairways and roughs was very important,” said Bouts. “These extra measures enable the course to tolerate extended play into the fall and allow for golf to start earlier in the spring.”

“The golf course has tremendous balance and variety to it,” Jack Nicklaus added. “You go from playing across open areas to playing around rock outcroppings to playing through wooded forests with mature trees, and then you end each nine of the course with spectacular, breath-taking views over the valleys.”