North Africa’s golf kingdom
IFRANE, MOROCCO | Most mornings, I am jolted from my slumber by ringtones emanating from my iPhone. But on this day, in this town in northern Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, I awake gently to the melodic call to prayer by the local muezzin over a loudspeaker. The chanting lasts for 10 minutes or so, and as I listen to his words, I think back to my round the previous day on the Jack Nicklaus-designed course at the Michlifen Resort I am visiting, and smile at the remembrance of a course maintenance crew member stopping his work when the muezzin beckoned the faithful to his mosque. Suddenly, the worker fetched a small, tattered rug from his golf cart. And after unrolling on the turf by a bunker, he dropped to his knees to pray, facing east toward Mecca.
Then, I thought of how such scenes have made me fall hard for the kingdom of Morocco – and why I have made 14 trips to play golf in this North African nation over the past 20 years.
The design and conditioning of the 50-odd courses that now operate in this land are a big part of the allure, chief among them the three courses at Royal Golf Dar Es Salam. Routed inside the 120,000-acre Mamora Forest on the outskirts of the capital city of Rabat and full of gnarly branched cork oaks, it boasts a pair of tracks, in the Red and Blue, that frequently host tour events as well as a nine-hole gem, called the Green, that is being expanded to 18 holes.
But I am just as enthralled by the après-golf, and the many things I am able to enjoy off-course.
One of those is touring the ancient Roman city of Volubilis, the streets of which I have wandered in my FootJoys, checking out well-preserved baths, columns and mosaics as white-feathered ibises flew overhead and flocks of sheep ambled down streets made of marble stones.
I have also toured the historic souks of Marrakech and Fes, for first-rate shopping and people-watching, and checked out vineyards outside the city Meknès, which is the kingdom’s answer to Napa Valley. Once known as the Versailles of Morocco, Meknès is also home to a number of 17th-century palaces and monuments built by the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail, who ensured an even-longer-lasting legacy by fathering more than 800 offspring.
There have also been dinners in sumptuous desert camps in the Sahara. And a train ride on the celebrated Marrakech Express, which Graham Nash so eloquently described in a song of that same name (but with the English spelling of Marrakesh) for Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Fortunately, I have found that golf in this kingdom can be pretty exotic in its own right. I once played in a pro-am for the Hassan II Trophy – when it was part of what is now known as the DP World Tour – with Italy’s Matteo Manassero. And we both marveled at the experience of teeing it on an 18-hole, Robert Trent Jones track built entirely within the walls of the royal palace in the Atlantic coast city of Agadir.
Another time, playing a nine-hole course inside another palace, this time in Meknès, I laughed as my playing partner pumped his tee shot over the ramparts, nearly taking out a couple of storks sitting on their nests. As the ball disappeared, I said, “That one’s O.P. – out of palace,” and we both howled with laughter.
No wonder I keep coming back.
John Steinbreder
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Top: Ruins of Volubilis, a Berber and Roman city in Morocco
LEONID ANDRONOV, GETTY IMAGES