And while the new facilities will give players of all ages the chance to hone their skills, supported by some of the latest training technology the sport has to offer, it is the course itself where that work will eventually be put into practice.<\/p>\n
The hard landscaping is now complete on Guernsey\u2019s west coast and, once fully bedded in, it is due to be playable from next August.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s not the longest course, but it\u2019s certainly one of the most interesting. From 150 yards out, you\u2019ve got to play the game properly,\u2019 said La Grande Mare owner Steve Lansdown.<\/p>\n
\u2018If you\u2019ve played La Grande Mare before, you won\u2019t recognise this course even though it\u2019s in the same sort of area.<\/p>\n
\u2018It was just amazing walking round with the course designer, how he saw things, and how he thought things needed to be played.<\/p>\n
\u2018So we\u2019ve got a lot of bunkers, we\u2019ve got a lot of lakes, we\u2019ve got some fabulous fairway to play off if you get on it, and some super greens to putt.\u2019<\/p>\n
Course manager Rick Hamilton is the man charged with creating those world-class playing conditions.<\/p>\n
With an impressive international CV as a golf course manager, he has returned to his home island to lead this major project.<\/p>\n
\u2018Basically, La Grande Mare now is a whole new development,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve gone through and had to rebuild it all. We acquired new land to make the course longer and to create a new feel for the new layout.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018A big part of the project has been the civil works, because obviously being a marshland and all the flooding, we really wanted to get involved with doing a lot of drainage to help the course recover.<\/p>\n
\u2018The mark of a good golf course is after you\u2019ve had environmental issues with rain or whatever, is how quickly can you be open and playable?<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve got flood management systems where we can open sluice gates to move water around, and then we built a lot of new features with new ponds.<\/p>\n
\u2018That\u2019s also to help to store water in droughts in the summer because we have to be self-contained. We can\u2019t buy any water in, so we\u2019ve got to be able to be sustainable. That\u2019s been a big part of it.<\/p>\n
\u2018Everything we\u2019ve done has been very focused around the ecology and the wildlife as well.\u2019<\/p>\n
That work, including putting in kilometres of drains, is the foundation for what will be a drastically different sporting proposition above ground.<\/p>\n
\u2018The old golf course was really flat. So we put a lot of mounding and undulations to create more drama and make it a different golfing experience.<\/p>\n
\u2018People will really enjoy when we put the pins in different positions. They\u2019ve got these big long putts and movement as well to make it more fun.\u2019<\/p>\n
Now with three par fives and six par threes \u2013 compared with the nine shorter holes previously \u2013 the course is set to be a par 69 or 70 overall, depending on which tees are used.<\/p>\n
\u2018When you\u2019re watching the Ryder Cup or top tournament golf on the television and you look at those greens, it\u2019s similar to what you\u2019re going to see here,\u2019 said Mr Lansdown.<\/p>\n
\u2018It will be a real test.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And while the new facilities will give players of all ages the chance to hone their skills, supported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-243466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}