Bangalore is the home of the second oldest golf club outside the United Kingdom with the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC) being founded in 1877, after the Royal Calcutta and just before India's third Club at Madras Gymkhana.

Alongside the BGC, in the city that is the home of India's high tech industry – Microsoft, IBM and Texas Instruments as well as other computer giants have offices in Bangalore – is the Karnataka Golf Association course (KGC). The club has close to 3,000 members.

The course, originally designed by Peter Thomson in the early seventies, is about to receive an upgrading and renovation in the hands of British firm Swan Golf Designs.

Howard Swan said: "I am very pleased to add to our work in Bangalore with this commission. The course has a number of drainage problems together with shortcomings in its teeing provision and its bunkering and it will be a challenge for us to go to India and look to directing a renovation masterplan for the 18 holes. It will make another project for us in the city that is the centre of India's high-tech sector, paralleling the golf real estate development at Albatross and a potential 27 holes project – hotel, real estate, golf courses and Academy – close to the new international airport." Swan expects to to start work on the renovation of KGC in May. Construction at Albatross Golf Resort, to be masterplanned by Swan's senior golf course architect Nigel Henbury, will begin in mid-2006.

This article first appeared in issue 4 of Golf Course Architecture, published in April 2006.