26 TEE BOX The new Gil Hanse course at Les Bordes COURSE BLUEPRINT Gil Hanse has been chosen to design a new 18-hole course at Les Bordes in Saint-Laurent-Nouan, France. The 7,365-yard layout will be west of the club’s existing Robert von Hagge course, on an area of land where there has previously been 27 holes of golf. The project came about following a conversation between Hanse and mutual friends of the new owners of Les Bordes, about the potential for developing a second course at the club. “We visited the site and fell in love with the entire property and it all worked out,” said Hanse. The new course is expected to be heathland in style. “I’ve always been a fan of Morfontaine. When I visited this site, that was the first thing that came to mind. Then we found some heather locally, not a lot, but enough to let us know that it’ll grow there, so we started developing the design and concept around that – it was wonderful. It will be very different stylistically and playability-wise to the original, which I think, and from the owner’s perspective, is a positive, as their members will have two very different golfing experiences.” Hanse’s routing map for the course suggests a very walkable design, with some tee boxes an extension of the fairway cut around the previous green. The tenth, eleventh and closing holes occupy the same large area of fairway, the latter playing to a green set against a lake edge. The map includes a ninehole short course, too. Of the course that previously occupied the land, Hanse said: “I don’t know stylistically what it looked like. We know where the hole corridors were. It appears, either through the growth of the trees over the last 10 years since the course has been closed, or maybe
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