Morocco is calling – what are you waiting for?
We’ve published quite a few articles on golf in the Kingdom of Morocco, most recently when we revisited Marrakech last year, then a few months ago when we teed it up on a winter weekend break to Agadir.
Often overlooked by golfers looking for an alternative to the usual destinations in Portugal or Spain, Morocco has more than forty courses spread out around the country, most of them built to modern specifications and maintained to a high standard.
A host of travel agencies can sort out accommodation and green fee packages but you can also make your arrangements, flying in to deal direct with clubs you’d like to visit – the only course we know of which is off limits to the public is the Palais Royal d’Agadir.
All the other clubs are happy to accept a green fee and provide, at very reasonable rates, a local caddy who’ll carry your bag and offer advice as required. Some caddies have been employed for more than fifty years (at Royal Dar Es Salam, for instance) so they certainly know their way around.
Last month, we were invited to join a select group from the European Golf and Travel Media Association to participate in a week-long golf trip along the Atlantic coastline of the country, starting in El Jadida and finishing in Tangier.
Hopefully, the following brief account of how the tour unfolded will give you a flavour of what golf is like in the northwest corner of the African continent.
Royal Golf El Jadida
After flying into Casablanca airport, we drove an hour to the Royal El Jadida course outside the fortified port city of El Jadida.
Built by the Portuguese in the 16th century as a staging post for mariners heading to and from South America, El Jadida is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the city fortifications of bastions and ramparts regarded as fine examples of military design.
The golf course lies to the north of the city, where architect Cabell Robinson carved out eighteen holes from a landscape of coastal woodland thirty years ago.
The golf facility is now manged by Madaëf Golfs – who operate another eight courses in five other Moroccan destinations – and a substantial investment was made a short time back which allowed James Duncan to carry out a very well-received bunker renovation, along with other infrastructure improvements made in and around the clubhouse.
Mazagan
The EGTMA group stayed a couple of nights at the magnificent Mazagan Beach Resort near El Jadida, which owner Sol Kerzner built in the early years of the new millennium, modelling the complex on his Sun City complex in his native South Africa.
The 492 rooms and suites (plus 14 restaurants and bars) at Mazagan are spread across a huge 600-acre coastal property with the spa including a 100 square metre breath taking space of mosaic and marble in the hammam, along with a state-of-the-art gym and fitness centre.
The Mazagan golf course is a Gary Player design, the longest in the country when it debuted in 2009 and fairways weave in and out of the low-lying sand dunes to the north of the resort. Holes are set out as two returning nines, each of which concludes metres from the waves crashing onto the beach, near to the clubhouse.
Bahia Golf Beach
Day three of the press trip got under way in rather unconventional style, attending an exhibition of horsemanship at the Tbourida (also known as Fantasia) in Bouznika. The performance consists of troupes of horse riders in traditional attire who head in a line along a 200-metre track at the same speed then, at the end of a short charge, fire their muskets into the sky.
The difficulty is synchronizing the horse movement during acceleration of the charge, and especially in firing the guns simultaneously so that one single shot is heard at the end. Regional heats take place – 31 junior and senior troupes participated in this one – before the finals take place at the Mohammed VI exhibition centre outside El Jadida.
After the excitement of the Tbourida in the morning, the afternoon’s play at Bahia Golf Beach was rather tame in comparison, though the course is a solid Cabell Robinson design which brings water hazards into play on several occasions.
The slope for the middle set of three tees (5,060 to 6,075 metres) varies between 120 and 129 so it’s not too taxing a track but if you choose to play from the black rear tees (6,749 metres) then the challenge increases quite a bit as a slope rating of 140 will confirm.
After finishing the round, it was back to relax at the on-site Vichy Celéstins Spa Hôtel, boasting 130 bedrooms and two restaurants with the country’s first Wellness Clinic also offering guests the use of a large health spa comprising an indoor pool, gymnasium, hydrothermal area, yoga studio and two large outdoor pools.
Royal Golf Dar Es Salam
Situated in the Zaers forest to the south of Rabat, the 45-hole golf facility at Royal Golf Dar Es Salam is a late-1960s Robert Trent Jones Senior production that concurrently hosts the Hassan II Golf Trophy and the Lalla Meryem Cup on the Red and Blue courses.
The Red course was recently renovated by architect James Duncan – with substantial green contouring a major feature of the upgrade – and these wildly undulating new putting surfaces definitely added to the playing experience for the visiting journalists.
There aren’t many (if any) golf clubs around the world with the resources to host international men’s and women’s professional golf tournaments in the same week on the same campus but Royal Dar Es Salam has being doing this on and off since 1993, which is a quite remarkable achievement.
An impressive new national Academy setup is due to open later this year at the club (the result of a joint venture with the PGA of America) and this will include all the usual golf training and practice components, as well as a museum, library, fitness centre, spa and restaurant.
Before heading back to our accommodation at the newly opened Conrad Rabat Arzana hotel outside the capital, there was time for a quick look round the medina in the old walled city of Salé, which is separated from Rabat by the Oued Bou Regreg where it empties into the Atlantic.
Of course, for the women in the group especially, a little local shopping after a long day at the golf club was the perfect way to round things off on the Rabat leg of the tour...
Royal Country Club de Tanger
The penultimate morning of the trip was spent on the road, making the 3-hour journey north from Rabat to the port city of Tangier and the Royal Country Club de Tanger, which celebrated its centenary in 2014.
It’s a wonderful old property in the Boubana district of the city, where the golf course has been extensively modified over the years, primarily by Hugh Alison in the 1930s, Cotton & Pennink in the 1960s then Peter Harradine twenty years ago.
In more recent times, clubhouse facilities at Royal Tangier have been upgraded, cart paths refurbished and general maintenance improvements made to allow the club to keep pace with a fast-moving golf world – anybody who visited five or six years ago would now be amazed by the transformation that has taken place since then.
After golf it was only a short 15-minute drive downtown to the Hilton Tanger City Center Hotel beside the Tanger Ville railway station, where the new high-speed TGV train service connects to Casablanca.
It was a little too late in the day for the media group to try any of the rooftop pool, sauna and steam facilities but the long-range views at dinner from La Kasbah restaurant on the 15th floor across the Strait of Gibraltar (to Tarifa, 31 kilometres away on the Spanish mainland) were simply stunning.
Hilton Tangier Al Houara Resort & Spa
The final leg of the 6-day Moroccan golfing excursion entailed a mere 30-minute drive south to the Hilton Tangier Al Houara Resort & Spa, where the 18-hole golf course was officially opened nine months ago by the joint architects Graham Marsh and Vijay Singh.
Funded by the Qatari Diar investment company, phase 1 of the Al Houara project includes the hotel and golf complex (extending to the 18-hole layout, 9-hole floodlit par three course and practice facilities), though the partly-built clubhouse is yet to be completed.
That means holes are artificially sequenced at the moment so that a round starts and finishes on the coastline, close to the hotel, and that isn’t an ideal arrangement but it’ll have to do for the time being.
Al Houara is a big budget development and it’s obvious there was no expense spared in the design and build of both the course and the surrounding infrastructure. It might lack a little character and soul right now – which Royal Tangier has in abundance – but the course itself is one of the very best in Morocco and should go on to host many prestigious championships in years to come.
When the round was over (and yet another magnificent spread of Moroccan food had been devoured next to the hotel pool) it was time to hit the road south to the Barceló Anfa Casablanca for a final overnight stop before flying out from Mohammed V International Airport the following day.
What a week it had been; mixing great golf with local culture and dining on Moroccan cuisine of the highest quality throughout the trip. Above all, the hospitality was unsurpassed which, for those who have been to the country before, is pretty much why they return again and again to a land that just keeps giving…
Sincere thanks for overseeing such an unforgettable expedition to tour guide Khalid from the Paris bureau of the Office National Marocain Du Tourisme (otherwise known as visitmorocco.com) and to EGTMA senior member Roland Machenuad who was heavily involved in the background organisation beforehand with President Jo Maes.
And just how good is Morocco as a golfing destination?
Well, you’ll never know if you don’t go…
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Jim McCann
Editor
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