Mauritius . 72-78_Mauritius. 68-74 15.05.11 13.24 Side 5
MAURITIUS
Playing Belle Mare Plage is like playing in a botanical garden with palms, eucalyptus, pines, jacarandas and some trees I’ve never seen before. The Legend - a tough course The Legend is one of seven 18-hole courses in Mauritius, and located at the Hotel Belle Mare Plage, which belongs to the small local chain Constance Hotels. If you’re staying at their other hotel, the Prince Maurice, you can take a shuttle bus. My advice is to save your strength before setting off to play this Golf Course as it is a real tough one with 17 water hazards and narrow fairways. If you should be unlucky enough to miss the fairway there is not much point searching for the ball, as you won’t find it. Add to this the wind blowing in from the Indian Ocean, and you might feel a bit apprehensive about playing this course. But don’t be put off, because it’s a great course - if you like a challenge! If you play it a little defensively and use your most important club, namely your head, it’s a pretty fun course. Moreover, it is definitely a beautiful course, with interesting layout and in very good condition considering the warm climate. Outside the fairways you’ll find lots of black lava rock, which is not much fun to play on. Playing Belle Mare Plage is like playing in a botanical garden with palms, eucalyptus, pines, jacarandas and some trees I’ve never seen before. The greens and fairways are framed by flowers in all the colors of the rainbow and 76
G R E AT G O L F M A G A Z I N E
small and large lakes are scattered throughout. It’s very beautiful. And if you are lucky you may even spot a large herd of deer that lives on the course. But the beauty is deceptive because underneath hides a “beast” of a golf course. In addition to the heat, the light is special because the sun stands almost directly above your head, and for unfamiliar eyes it makes it harder to judge distance and direction.
The lost balls Usually I have seven to eight balls in my bag, which is more than enough, but at the Legend there are so many water hazards that it is a wonder it’s possible to build a golf course here at all. And if the balls don’t end up in the water, they seem to disappear in dense shrubs and grass. I feel like a botanist rooting around in the rough looking for balls. And of course I never find them! Now I understand why people I meet in the woods outside the fairway constantly offer to sell me balls. They’re probably just waiting for us to leave the green with our tail between our legs before quickly retrieving the balls from the woods. I guess it must be a pretty lucrative business. I’m quite sure I recognized several of the balls I bought back. The Legend is in fact a very beautiful golf course, and not too tiring to walk as it’s relatively flat and not too long. All the holes