Spoiled for choice on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast

Spoiled for choice on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast Our last resort article veered a little bit off the beaten track for most golfers, delving as it did into Marrakech in the northwest corner of the African continent, where more than a dozen new golf ventures have appeared since the start of the new millennium. We now head several thousand kilometres east to the southern shores of Turkey and another government-sponsored golf tourism incentive which has seen the introduction of a similar number of high-end golf courses with associated 5-star accommodation facilities. Occupying a 20-kilometre coastal stretch between the points where the Aksu and Köprücay rivers enter the Mediterranean, the Belek courses are easily accessible, with many tour operators offering all-inclusive packages flying in and out of nearby Antalya airport. Antalya The 36-hole complex at Antalya Golf Club is complemented by the 440-bedroom Sirene Belek Golf Hotel and the Kempinski Hotel The Dome, which has 158 rooms and suites, along with 25 villas. Both the PGA Sultan and Pashaare courses from European Golf Design in consultation with David Jones, with the former layout co-hosting the Eisenhower Trophy when it was played here ten years ago. A recent reviewer thought the PGA Sultan had “a definite Surrey sand belt feel” due to it being “set out on sandy ground with tall pines lining most holes.” He continued: “there’s no doubting the ambition and where the investment has gone (with) impressive practice facilities and club houses with first class service… the closing stretch of holes from 16 provides a grandstand finish.” Carya Host venue for three editions of the Turkish Open from 2016 to 2018, the 18-hole layout at Carya Golf Club is a Tim Lobb design from 2008, when the architect was working with Peter Thomson and Ross Peret. Holes are routed through huge stands of pine and eucalyptus trees, with play continuing into the evening if required thanks to high-tech flood lighting. The Regnum Carya Golf & Spa Resort – which staged the G20 summit in 2015 – offers 550 rooms, suites and villas next to the golf course. Review comments from earlier this year include: “this whole facility is outstanding: the practice facilities are the best I have ever seen and the condition of them is as good as anywhere… everything about it is big and bold: huge, deep bunkers, severe undulations and lightning-quick greens are the order of the day (so) be sensible in choosing the correct tee or it won’t be a fun experience.” Sueno Next door to Carya, the 36-hole complex at Sueno Golf Club came from the drawing board of Bob Hunt of IGD, which was previously named PGA Design Consulting. The Pines and Dunes 18-hole layouts first opened for play in 2007 and they’re anchored by the onsite Sueno Hotels Golf Belek and the adjacent Sueno Hotels Deluxe Belek, which boasts more than 400 bedrooms. A post from a couple of months ago described the higher-ranked Pines course as “a lovely parkland course set behind the resort strip in Belek and part of a stretch of 12 other courses… the fairways and surrounds are heavily mounded… mature pine and eucalyptus trees dominate (with) excellent conditioning, especially the greens.” Cornelia The adjacent Cornelia Diamond Golf Resort & Spa extends to over 550 bedrooms, with half a dozen restaurants and the same number of bars. The Cornelia De Luxe Resort is located a 10-minute drive along the coast and it’s something of a water paradise with connected pools, waterslides and waterfalls. There’s also a buffet-style restaurant, 5 other restaurants and 8 bars. The 27-hole Nick Faldo Championship course at the golf club offers three 18-hole configurations: King (holes 1 to 18), Queen (holes 10 to 27), and Prince (holes 1-9 and 19-27). The club co-hosted the 28th edition of the prestigious World Amateur Team Championship with Antalya Golf Club in 2012, with the competition reduced to 54 holes due to bad weather. Montgomerie Maxx Royal The Maxx Royal Belek Golf Resort has the Montgomerie Maxx Royal course (originally known as “Papillon”) as its golfing centrepiece. The accommodation comprises more than 500 rooms, suites and villas, backed up by several swimming pools, an aqua park and extensive children’s amenities. Gary Johnson of European Golf Design collaborated with Colin Montgomery on designing the course (which staged the Turkish Open several times in recent years). “The course and infrastructure are top quality, giving a first-class all-round experience,” wrote a reviewer a couple of months ago. “The sandy waste areas on a couple of holes stand out as a great feature; very easy to find one, very difficult to escape with any degree of control… conditioning and greens were fantastic; turf conditions were carpet-like and greens were agreeably firm.” Gloria The Gloria Golf Resort provides the main accommodation choice at the 45-hole Gloria golf complex (providing more than 500 room, suite and villa options) and it’s complemented by another couple of on-site facilities at the Gloria Serenity Resort and Gloria Verde Resort. All told, there are more than 20 sumptuous á la carte and main restaurants located across the three hotels. Michel Gayon designed the 18-hole Old and New layoutsat Gloria, with the 9-hole Verde course following in more recent years. When you Include the outstanding practice complex, it’s easy to see why Gloria is regarded as one of the best golf setups in the country. The club also hosted the now defunct Turkish Seniors Open between 2000 and 2007, along with four editions of the Turkish Airlines Challenge between 2015 and 2018. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

We’ve been ranking golf courses in Turkey for fifteen years, starting with a Top 10 before the listings were expanded to a Top 15 in 2016. When you consider there are only around 33 golfing layouts in the country then we think our coverage is adequate. Most of the golf played in Turkey is by incoming players to Antalya, which has year-round flights bringing visitors in from all over Europe, many of them attracted by all-inclusive stay and play golf packages. Carya A very prominent destination for incoming golfers is the 18-hole layout at Carya Golf Club, which remains our #1 for Turkey. Host club for the Turkish Open from 2016 to 2018, the course was laid out by Tim Lobb when he worked in the same design firm as Peter Thomson and Ross Perrett, with holes routed through tall stands of pine and eucalyptus trees on a very sandy site. Montgomerie Maxx Royal Another Turkish Open venue, the Montgomerie Maxx Royal, leaps five places up the new chart to the runner-up spot, surpassing the #4 position it held in 2010. Colin Montgomerie is credited as the headliner designer here, working with architect Gary Johnson from European Golf Design to fashion the fairways across a landscape that was previously nothing other than government-owned forest. Antalya Another nearby European Golf Design production – this time built in collaboration with David Jones – is the 36-hole facility at Antalya Golf Club, where the Pasha course rises two places to #6, reclaiming the position it held in our inaugural Turkish chart in 2008. Often unfairly overlooked in favour of the PGA Sultan course, the Pasha more than holds its own against its higher-ranked sibling. Gloria The Old course at Gloria Hotels & Resorts climbs two rungs of the ladder up to #7. Designed by Michel Gayon, this 18-hole layout was one of the first of the new wave of courses to appear in Belek around the end of the 1990s. The 18-hole New and 9-hole Verde courses have since been added to create a wonderful 45-hole golf facility at Gloria, cementing its status as a “must play” for the many golfers who return here annually. Robinson Nobilis Next door to the Gloria resort, at the eastern end of the Belek golf strip, lies the Dave Thomas-designed Robinson Nobilis course, advancing two places to #12 in our Turkish standings. It’s another late 1990s design, set next to where the Acisu River empties into the Mediterranean Sea, with holes occupying a sandy coastal site. Conditioning has been suspect in that past but that’s no longer true, thanks to ample investment in recent years from parent company TUI. Cullinan The highest new entry into our standings (at #13) is the Aspendos course at Cullinan Links Golf Club at the west end of the Belek strip, where the Besgoz River enters the Med. The old Titanic 27-hole setup – which started out as TAT International in the late 1990s – has recently been reconfigured by Gary Johnson to form two exciting new 18-hole courses, the Aspendos and the Olympos. To view the entire detailed list of our latest Top 15 Golf Courses of Turkey click the link. View list here. If you have any comment to make on the above article then please use the “WRITE A RESPONSE” link at the bottom of this page. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses

Carya in Belek heads up our new rankings for Turkey With only eighteen golf clubs operating across the nation, you might think a Top 15 chart for Turkey veers towards overprovision of the product on our part but there’s a genuine depth of quality to be found in the golf courses around the country, particularly in the Belek region, so we make no apology for showcasing so many of these top tracks. It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a single course located along the Mediterranean seaboard at the start of the 1990s but that all changed when the government designated eleven plots of land behind the existing coastal-fronted resort hotels for golf development to help fill otherwise empty bedrooms during the quieter shoulder seasons and winter months. Wisley Golf Club member Bulent Goktuna was keen to expand the game in his home country so he managed to secure one of the first parcels of land allocated for golf on a 50-year lease before engaging the services of David Jones and David Feherty to co-design the first course at The National Golf Club, with the trend setting layout opening in late 1994. The rest, as they say, is golfing history. The club started out with less than a hundred members but it wasn’t long before Scandinavian golfers began to arrive, escaping the long, harsh winter at home for the pine fringed fairways of Turkey’s Riviera on the Med. Once direct charter flights to nearby Antalya became popular, the Dutch, Germans and British would also arrive in increasing numbers. In 1995, the estimated number of visiting golfers was around 15,000. Twenty years later, that annual figure was almost half a million, according to statistics from the Belek Hotel Owners Association. Unfortunately, perceived security concerns have slowed growth in the last couple of years but an approximate total of five and a half million rounds over a 20-year period is still a mightily impressive statistic. And so to our Turkish rankings, which were last updated two years ago. Our new national number 1, rising two places to the top spot, is the current venue for the European Tour’s Turkish Airlines Open, the course at Carya Golf Club in Belek. Opened for play in November 2008, the course was envisioned as a 27-hole layout by its owner but architects Thomson, Perrett & Lobb convinced the client that an exceptional 18-hole course was preferable to the intended three loops of nine. The native heather initially discovered on the southern section of the property has since been transplanted throughout the course, giving the layout its distinctive, somewhat surprising, heathland feel. We visited the course last year and had this to say about what we found: “it’s blatantly obvious that no expense has been spared when installing the infrastructure here… the majestic umbrella pines that flank the fairways and the acres of heathers fronting many of the tee boxes sets the mood for a round which is played on a surprisingly undulating site… Carya certainly sets a very high standard.” Not only does the course now assume the mantle of national number 1, a position it will be hard to displace from when we next re-rank Turkey in two years’ time, Carya also shot twenty places up our Continental Europe Top 100 listings last month, breaking into the Top 50 at number 40. Also climbing two places to the national runner-up position in Turkey is the Prince course at the Cornelia Golf Resort in Belek, which lies less than four kilometres east of Carya. Designed by Nick Faldo and in operation for a decade now, the 27-hole facility at Cornelia is laid out within one of the more heavily contoured parcels of land in the region, affording it a natural feel that many of its close competitors lack. Host venue for the Eisenhower Trophy in 2012, Cornelia also rose a massive sixteen places in the latest edition of our European Top 100 to number 59 so it’s onward and upward for the top two tracks in Turkey! Our only new entry appears at number 12 and it’s an 18-hole layout from José Canales Mas Golf Uno Golf Design at Kusadasi International Golf Club on the Aegean coast, situated between the small town of Söke and the resort town of Kuşadası. It’s the first course in Turkey built within a residential development and it overlooks both the Dilek Peninsula-Büyük Menderes Delta National Park and the nearby Greek island of Samos. Set out on hilly terrain, there’s around 130 metres in elevation change across the property, offering simply stunning views of the surrounding mountain ranges and the Aegean Sea. Fairways have been cut through small plantations of olive and carob trees and holes are routed around the contours of two adjacent ridges, with a couple of lakes also coming into play on the front nine. We’re aware of a new project opening this year in Bodrum, where Tim Lobb has built a new course for the Carya owner, Fikret Ozturk of Regnum Hotels. Set inland from the coast in the mountains, it’s a strongly contoured course featuring rocky outcrops. Due to the difficult terrain, bunkering was developed in the field via sketch ideas and philosophies. Careful attention has been paid to ground conditions, with run offs, small undulations and trees forming the back bone of the playing strategy. An olive grove previously occupied the land and as much of it as possible was retained during construction. Expect to see this 18-hole layout, "Country Life", feature in our next news item on Turkish golf courses. Thanks to Tim Lobb of Lobb & Partners for background material used in compiling this report. Rank/ To view further details of the Top 15 for Turkey click the link. You’ll never see Top 100 Golf Courses claim that we publish “definitive” golf course listings but we do like to think that we produce the “most informed” rankings that you’ll find anywhere within the public domain of the golf media. We thrive on feedback so if there’s anything you’d like to tell us about our new Turkish standings then please use the “Respond to this article” link at the top or bottom of this page to give us your opinion. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses