It is a little gem placed delicately on the “bocche de Bonifacio”, with its feet in the Mediterranean facing Sardinia. On the Isle of Beauty, Sperone is another gem, three times elected France's leading site by the magazine European Golf. Playing the 18 holes of Sperone, in the heart of the maquis then by the sea, is certainly to live a unique golfing and visual experience. And this all year round, as the director, Ariane Buzzo emphasizes: “Thanks to the presence of golf, the thousand-year-old city of Bonifacio is no longer just a tourist destination. The course is also very pleasant to play whatever the season. We are often in a polo shirt in the middle of winter, it is the ideal place to come and spend a weekend without spending hours on the plane. "

A course of great variety

Between the flowering of white cistus and roses in May, mastic and myrtle in July, not to mention the shrub trees in autumn, Sperone is an enchanted walk all twelve months of the year. Spectators of all kinds, or rather all kinds, will sometimes be your traveling companion and will watch your swing from above, like the gray shearwater or the crested cormorant. A very varied landscape, fauna and flora for an 18 hole which is just as much: inland, hilly and links, the course never offers the same face, sculpted in 1990 by Robert Trent Jones Sr. trod the still wild bush five years earlier, the famous American architect (who also designed Peeble Beach and Valderrama) would have raised his index finger towards the point exposed to the four winds, before exclaiming: "There will be a fairway ... here a green… there the clubhouse. "

From 12 to 16, the Mediterranean as a game partner

The second part of the route, after a 10^e hole, which already helps to speed up your heart rate, is downright mind-blowing. From 12 to 16, "the Amen Corner" of Sperone ", the Mediterranean invites itself to the game. In order for your score card - already shaken by the mistral often present in Bonifacio - to remain presentable at the club house, you have to fly over the sea five times, without incident. The signature hole, the 16, is even one of the 18 dream holes of the European continent according to the British book “Europe Elite 1000”. To hope to putter for an eagle on this par 5 touchable in 2, you will have to take your courage and your club in both hands and tap twice over the sea, like the California course at Cypress Point!

From the round ball to the little white ball

In order to give a real boost to golf on the Island of Beauty, Sperone will develop a partnership with the Murtoli area, another 12-hole setting (for the moment) located 45 minutes away, on the road to Ajaccio. " Most of the players who come to our course are tourists, says Ariane Buzzo. There is no golf culture in Corsica. Football crushes all other disciplines. “Ironically, the course record (64 on this par 72) has been held for ten years by the former club pro, Jean-Claude Papi, grandson of footballer Claude Papi, who was the one of the great architects of the European epic of Bastia in 1978.

Frank Crudo

Useful information

Sperone is a 30-minute drive from Figari airport, 2h30 from Ajaccio airport and 2h45 from Bastia airport. The golf course also offers a partnership with a dozen luxury hotels located near Bonifacio. https://www.golfdesperone.com/