Going for Golf

Mazagan - here’s looking at you kid

Mazagan Beach Resort

Hundreds of workmen, their yellow hard hats pushed backwards on their heads, amble past us, tired and dirty from their morning shift, like miners returning from a coalface. High-sided lorries spirit away the detritus of a major construction site, cloaking our windscreen with thick white clouds of dust. It is hard to escape the feeling that when they clear, whatever lies at the other end of this road will be something to behold.

We pass under a security barrier and the secret is revealed, rising up from the scrub and set against the backdrop of a pale blue Atlantic Ocean like some enormous, elaborate sandcastle.

Most instantly striking is the sheer size of Mazagan Beach Resort. From the 500-bedroom, five-star hotel built along traditional Moroccan lines around a vast central courtyard, to the conference complex, casino and nightclub, eight restaurants and health centre, nothing has been designed to be merely big enough.

An essential part of any luxury destination these days is a golf course. It follows that the quality of what is provided must complement the whole, and yet so often it is the 18 strips of land adjacent to the hotel which ultimately disappoint.
Not so at Mazagan, where they have fashioned something special from the 250 hectares of sandy bluffs and impenetrable hinterland which first confronted them on this site, 90km south of Casablanca.

It is a monster from the back tees, at well over 7,000 yards, but is genuinely accessible to all.  Only a handful of people have played the course up to now, and with no tee boxes, yardage markers, fancy flags, or the various other dressings we never notice are there until they are missing, this will be a natural test. A return to the basics of trusting your eye and selecting clubs accordingly. At least in Stephane, the French-Canadian director of golf, I have the ideal playing partner to help.

The first hole slopes down and then up, dog-legging to the left to an elevated green. In common with the rest of the course, the fairway is reassuringly wide, but any deviation from its manicured curves will confront errant drivers with an escape issue. When the scrub grows higher and plants mature it will be no place to be.

The par-three second requires a decent mid-iron to a large, sloping green but offers some solace for those who traditionally start badly in the form of the first real panoramic view of the rest of the resort and majority of the course. It is from here that the links nature of it is fully revealed. Even the afternoon sun throws shadowy relief on the innumerable gentle mounds, rolling fairways and various humps and bumps of a course made in Morocco but faithful to golf’s seaside roots.

If you can par the 435-yard sixth, you will enjoy the view from the slightly elevated green that much more. If you cannot, and you will not be the last not to, the vista will make up for it. Stephane considers this the signature hole and it’s hard to argue with him.

Your route back to the clubhouse will require some straight drives and a little fortune if you are to avoid the sculpted bunkers which pepper the way. The rolling fairways, large, undulating greens and complete (and conscious) lack of trees certainly echo more ancient links than this, and to have cultured something so apparently natural in a little over two years is undeniably impressive.

And if the front nine is great fun and as pretty as a picture, the back nine is its even more attractive, taller and delightful sibling. It also has the capacity to make your life difficult.

The 10th is a tricky par-four, with a humped fairway leading down to a saucer-shaped green in a gentle valley, which might make you switch clubs a few times before you settle on one. The 11th is another straight-ish dog-leg with an elevated, shallow green daring you not to leave it short or over-club and end up in the deep bunkers which will see plenty of action and cause much frustration. Not for nothing are these two fourth and second on the stroke index. If you make it through unscathed your card will thank you later.

If you are still on course for a good score, the par-five final hole will remind you why we play this game. A drive down the left-hand side of the fairway will set you up for that most glorious of choices: risk or reward? Take out the three wood and ignore the perils of anything right, or lay up and play safe? The answer should be obvious.

If you are at Mazagan, you will have noticed the palpable spirit of adventure which runs through this resort; a desire to aim high, take on established principles and just go for it. The likelihood is that you are on holiday, having a great time and relaxing like never before.

And if you don’t take that second shot on at the 18th you will have ‘kinda’ missed the point.