The Royal Country Club of Tangier celebrated its centenary this year. For the occasion, festivities and a competition were organized at the beginning of April on a magnificent course which knows how to defend itself ...

By Frank Crudo

  • Photo credit: © T.Plassais / Swing Féminin

Nestled at the foot of the hills of Tangier, where sumptuous villas have sprung up, the Royal Country Club had released its gala outfit on April 10 and 11. On this perfectly manicured par 70, 44 teams of two players, all amateurs, competed for the Centenary Trophy in four balls, best ecclectic ball over two days. Many Moroccan golfers of course, but also a few French (including Gérard Bourgoin, the former president of the AJ Auxerre football club) were invited to rub shoulders with a course that sticks out almost at every hole.

Little chance in fact of making the best card of his career on the dean of Moroccan golf courses. The course combines all the possible difficulties: long, tortuous, hilly, narrow, windy, wooded (you are looking for your balls lost between pines, eucalyptus, cypress and firs), fast greens, without forgetting some water obstacles. particularly well (or badly it depends) placed. In short, we are stuck with the total! An obstacle course in a way that the club's website sums up with a phrase that slams like a pretty understatement: "Technical, this course offers a hilly part and a flat part sometimes difficult, sometimes simple, with a few surprises…"

More than anywhere else, stake is clearly the key here. So much so that a pro player from the club will even let us take out his 3 iron on most departures… Hooks and slices are indeed two words banned in Tangier. And even the bravest have an interest in planting the tee of 1 with more than three balls in the bag.

But it's more than the scorecard in life, and some holes are postcard-worthy. Such as n ° 5, the highest point of the route, from which you can glimpse the Mediterranean and part of the “city of foreigners”. This is how Tangier was notably nicknamed because of its many successive colonizations (Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Portuguese, English, French and Spanish). The view is breathtaking and makes you more easily forget the slightest triple bogey ...

Founded in 1914 on the initiative of Sultan Moulay Abdelaziz at the request of the city's diplomatic staff, the Royal Country Club is the first to be built in the Mediterranean basin and one of the oldest on the African continent. Resort for many international celebrities - Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Rupert Murdoch, LizTaylor, Calvin Klein or even Donald Trump unsheathed their drivers there - this old 65-hectare course underwent a serious facelift in 2001. It is the famous English architect Peter Harradine who was in charge of the operation, at the initiative of the Moroccan authorities, which have long relied on golf to develop tourism.

Another peculiarity of the site is located at the practice ... Here, no mesh tractor to collect the hundreds of balls. But rather young local caddies who supplement their end of the month by collecting the balls… despite the presence of players on the mats. Suddenly, we witness a startled spectacle - halfway between the funfair and the pigeon shooting - where about twenty ruthless golfers duck two or three teenagers leaning near the 100 meters sign ...

The Centennial Trophy festivities were also an opportunity to inaugurate a museum in the clubhouse, which traces the history of golf in Tangier and Morocco. A sumptuous gala dinner closed the event, in the presence of many personalities, including the mayor of the city and the president of the Moroccan golf federation. Hearty dishes, dancers, shows and speeches of all kinds were on the menu for the evening. Without forgetting the traditional awards ceremony which rewarded the pair Mohamed Chaibi-Jalil Bennis in gross and Afifa Oudghiri-Alal Saadaoui in net. A competition that was not official let us remember. Rather preferable since "local" rules were sometimes applied by some players: ballé placed on the fairways ... and on the rough, 1 meter putt "given" ... by the player himself, or even drop at the point of entry from… out of limit.

But whatever. Because if the "strict rules of golf" as Goldfinger would say were not respected, good humor and good spirit were part of these two historic days of golf in Tangier ...

TO GO THERE:
ROYAL AIR MAROC: http://www.royalairmaroc.com/fr-fr

Royal Golf of Tangier: Opening time 7 a.m. to 19 p.m.
Price 40 € 18 holes, Material 10 €.
Mountain road, boubana street
Tel: 00 212 5 39 93 89 25
Email: golftanger@menara.ma
Opening hours 7 a.m. to 19 p.m.

MORE INFORMATION: http://www.royalgolftanger.com/