Globetrotting UK practice Swan Golf Designs will soon have a new country on its resume, as the firm has signed up its first client in Tanzania.

Principal architect Howard Swan has just returned from a trip to the TPDF Lugalo club in Dar es Salaam in the East African country, and says a major expansion project should start in early 2011. 

Swan’s aim is to create the country’s first international standard golf course. Lugalo’s existing 18 holes are to be revised and upgraded and comprehensive academy and practice facilities (including a FIRSTGOLFAfrica course and training centre) put in place.

The club, which is owned by the Tanzanian Peoples’ Defence Force (the country’s army) also hopes to expand its facilities to become a full service country club, with a dormy house, spa, swimming pool and recreational facilities. It will will be open to members, visitors, holiday makers from the nearby Dar Es Salaam hotels and to the public at large. 

Swan originally visited Lugalo in 2008 when possibilities for developing the original, basic nine holes were being explored. Using its own resources and engineering expertise, the club increased the layout to eighteen holes. The resultant design opened for play in 2009.

Howard Swan says: “It will be a challenge to produce a course of true international standard in a country that has nothing like it already. We aim to create a place were beginners can come and learn the game but also where the public, and pros, can play at the highest level. Our remit will not only be to act as golf course architects in laying out the course but to help the Tanzanians establish training programmes through FIRSTGOLFAfrica, as the game of golf expands in the country.

“It is very exciting for us to pioneer like this. We have already done so in Libya, Lebanon, Mongolia, Nigeria, Brazil and most notably in India, and are greatly looking forward to continuing in East Africa.”