60 The story of the creation of Les Bordes, not far from Orléans in the area of France known as the Sologne, is well known. How architect Robert von Hagge, having befriended golf consultant Yoshi Endo while working in Japan was told to expect a call from Baron Marcel Bich. How von Hagge, on returning to Texas, took a call from a Frenchman he could hardly understand; the only things he learned from that call being that the Frenchman (Bich) wanted to build a golf course on his estate and that there was a first-class Air France ticket to Paris awaiting him at the airport. And how the course was eventually built, at a cost that “exceeded the unlimited budget”, by an American design firm that had never worked in Europe before and a Japanese construction management company. Throughout its history, Les Bordes has remained something of a mystery. Almost impossible for outsiders to play, but ranked among Europe’s finest courses by a lot of those who did, it existed in a state of semilimbo for many years after Bich’s death in 1994. At one point about a decade ago, it was apparently being taken over by a group in which Greg Norman was involved. And then, in 2018, the course finally was sold, to a consortium headed by private equity specialist Driss Benkirane. From the very start, Les Bordes was intended to be a 36-hole club. Von Hagge’s original concept plan for the site incorporated two courses, but that plan was lost in an office fire, and no-one can remember what it looked like. As late as 2010, the year in which von Hagge died, his firm, with his longtime associate and partner Rick Baril taking the lead, was supposed to be building the second course. Finally, after the 2018 takeover by Benkirane, founder of private equity firm RoundShield, the club was reformed on a rather more solid footing. The clubhouse has been rebuilt – rather beautifully – and a number of cottages constructed to accommodate members and their guests. A programme of building some larger houses, which will be sold to members (and which can also be rented when their owners are not in residence), is about to start, and the chateau which was Baron Bich’s home is becoming a Six Senses hotel, expected to open in 2024, although interestingly, hotel guests will have no access to the golf courses, which are strictly reserved for members and their guests. And, finally, the second eighteen hole has come to fruition, along with a ten-hole par three course that goes by the name of the Wild Piglet, both designed and constructed by Gil Hanse’s team. The Les Bordes property is enormous, around 1,400 acres, and as such contains a lot of different topography, soils and the like. Hanse’s new course is not near the clubhouse or the Old course, in fact it is a ten to fifteen minute cart ride away. This The fifteenth is a short par four with central hazards creating multiple options of approach LES BORDES
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