Golfing next to the Pyramids
In this country dominated by desert, there are, fittingly, 34 bunkers. Nevertheless, it’s a relatively easy course: nine holes that if you play them twice measure about 5,300 yards long, with only one dogleg. In many ways, it was a familiar golf experience: the greens and the grass on the fairways are similar to those we play in North America.
You can play in a T-shirt if you want. Or sneakers. It’s all quite informal, much like the country itself. Jasmine trees line the fairway and the course is visited by an assortment of birds and animals. Late in the day, owls do flyovers. There are pigeons and crows.
And always, the pyramids. I could not get those big things off my mind as I hit an approach shot at 12, which offers the most dramatic view of the 455-foot-high Cheops pyramid.
There are plans to renovate the course this year, with Robert Trent Jones Jr., who has designed courses all over the world, at the helm. It may be the only course in the world where a department of antiquities is involved. The new course will have three water hazards, but special care will be taken to provide a series of pools that will contain any runoff and keep the water well away from the pyramids. Also, the water hazards will be fairly shallow.
There will be an enhanced locker room and the restaurant will be expanded. For now, though, there is a wonderful old wooden-bedecked 19th hole, where you can feel you’re back in Victorian times — until you look up at the pyramids, which brings you right back to ancient times.
Excerpted from an article by gerald Eskenazi for Guelph Mercury
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