Picturesque Kingsbarns looks the part come rain or shine

Kingsbarns Golf Links in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland was once voted 17th in a list of top golf courses outside the USA.

I’d like to see the 16 that beat it. Because from first tee to final green it is quite simply the most beautifully, stunning golf course it has been my privilege to set eyes, feet and clubs upon.

The warm summer sunshine and near cloudless skies which enveloped our round undoubtedly helped lift the spirits and perhaps the recollection of its burning rays do cradle the magical memories that now linger long.

But even allowing for that stroke of climatic good luck, there is no doubt that Kingsbarns offers one of the greatest golfing experiences you will find on this planet, let alone in this country – including the USA.

And whatever the weather.

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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 11:21 am

New 5-star resort Verdura offers great golf in Sicily

When you think of Sicily, golf probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but it is, in fact, home to one of Europe’s premier golf resorts, the new Verdura Golf & Spa Resort.

Located on Sicily’s southwest coast, the Italian resort has 45 holes of golf, all designed by golf course architect Kyle Phillips, whose credits also include Kingsbarns Links near St. Andrews, Scotland.

The resort sits on a 570-acre seaside site and features a world-class spa, five-star hotel, two 18-hole courses and a nine-hole par-3 course.

“It’s a unique low-density concept for a coastline property, with only electric vehicles allowed inside the resort. Golf purists will absolutely love it,” Phillips said.

“Near the seashore, I tried to give the golf a links-land feel with a rougher seaside look, transitioning to large rolling Muirfield-like landforms as it moves back away from the sea,” he added

Verdura’s East Course is 7,221 yards, and the West Course measures 7,474 yards from the championship tees. Phillips routed holes so that a Composite Championship Course could be formed to present a challenging venue for a future professional tournament.

The Championship Course would feature all of Verdura’s ocean holes and could play as long as 7,468 yards.

The Accidental Golfer
WorldGolf.com
July 27, 2010

Yas brings links to Gulf, says Phillips

With the opening last month of Yas Links, Abu Dhabi’s latest new golf course, traditional links-style golf has arrived in the United Arab Emirates, according to course designer Kyle Phillips.

“What makes Yas Links so intriguing is how traditional it is, because nothing like it has ever been attempted before in the UAE,” said Phillips. “There are a lot of very good courses in the UAE but up until now there hasn’t been anything that would feature on a golf connoisseur’s must play list.”

Phillips has made a dozen trips to the site since February 2007, overseeing the construction details. Presented with a flat desert wasteland devoid of vegetation, Phillips created a dunescape which he reckons evokes a Scottish links flavour. “It was a tough challenge and we had to work out where we could find the material to build the landforms necessary to create a true, traditional-style links course. We also had to take great care in preserving the ecology and every aspect of the course design took this into account,” he said. “Any good golf course has to have a big finish, and I believe the three closing holes at Yas Links are three of the best closing holes of any course in the world I know.”

Yas Links is situated on Yas Island, a major sport and entertainment development created by local firm Aldar, 15 minutes from Abu Dhabi’s city centre. The course measures 7,394 yards from the back tees. Eight holes hug the coastline and 109 bunkers to negotiate along with shifting winds. Five of the last six holes play along the sea. Paspalum grass on all the playable areas should allow for firm and fast surfaces all year round.

Golf Course Architecture
July 9, 2010

Verdura Golf and Spa Resort in Sicily – Europe’s Unparalleled Golf Destination

Verdura Golf and Spa Resort in Sicily offers golfers from around the world an unrivaled golfing experience on Sicily’s southwest coast. The resort features three golf courses, designed by world-renowned architect Kyle Phillips, and opened for its first full year in March 2010. Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily is quickly becoming a “must play” destination for golf aficionados.

According to Sir Rocco Forte, Chairman and CEO of the luxury hotel company The Rocco Forte Collection, no other golf resort on the continent can compare to Verdura. “There wasn’t anywhere in Europe that offered the kind of golfing holiday I was after,” claims Sir Rocco who spent eight years developing Verdura as the company’s first resort venture.

Verdura’s 570-acre site encompasses some 1.2 miles of private coastline. Kyle Phillips, who created the acclaimed Kingsbarns Links near St. Andrews and The Grove near London, had a pristine canvas upon which to design his vision for the two 18-hole championship courses, the East and the West, as well as the neat little 9-hole par-3 course. “Sir Rocco Forte found a beautiful piece of seafront ground where we have combined our respective skills to develop a 5-star hotel and spa, 36 holes of championship golf, plus a 9-hole par-3 course and full practice facility,” says Phillips. “It’s a unique low-density concept for a coastline property, with only electric vehicles allowed inside the resort. Golf purists will absolutely love it. Near the seashore, I tried to give the golf a linksland feel with a rougher seaside look, transitioning to large rolling Muirfield-like landforms as it moves back away from the sea.”
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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 12:11 pm

Italy: The Latest Home to Links Golf

An American golf course architect designing a seaside links in Scotland, just down the coast from St. Andrews, is akin to an English chef cooking coq au vin at Le Cordon Bleu. But that’s just what California-based Kyle Phillips managed to do a decade ago at Kingsbarns Golf Links. In his latest overseas venture, Phillips has laid out two spectacularly scenic yet understated 18-hole courses at Verdura Golf & Spa Resort, the new Rocco Forte Collection resort on the southern coast of Sicily.

The five-star resort–just over an hour from the international airport in Palermo and near the historic city of Agrigento, with its Valley of the Temples–has much to speak for itself, as Luxist noted in reporting the opening of the property. Not the least of Verdura’s attributes are suites and villas appointed with assorted mosaics, ceramics and artifacts culled from this primordial island by the interior designer Olga Polizzi, Sir Rocco Forte’s sister. The amenities also include four restaurants, among them a Sicilian trattoria, and a gelateria.
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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 9:17 am

Abu Dhabi Goes Old School

Yas Links is a nod to tradition in a stunning location

When it comes to Abu Dhabi’s grand masterplan, Yas Links Golf Club is something of an anomaly. You only have to look at the neighboring structures of Ferrari World, the Yas Marina Circuit and the chameleonic Yas Hotel to appreciate the emirate’s taste for the futuristic. And yet Yas Links is a tribute to an era where golfers played in plus fours, smoked pipes and answered to names like Old Tom Morris. Let’s face it, that’s not where Abu Dhabi’s at.

The most amazing thing about the course is, simply, that it works. In this hot, desert climate, the concept of emulating a seaside Scottish links appear absurd at first, but Yas Links is remarkably authentic, from the wispy fescue grass to the crumpled dunes and the hickory flagsticks. Yas has traded the bling factor so pronounced in other new golf courses here with a minimalist approach that is both welcome and refreshing.
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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 10:28 am

A Swanky Italian Job

Given the effect that volcano’s have had on travel plans recently,Tim Smith was somewhat relieved that Scicily’s best-known landmark – Mount Etna – did not disrupt his trip to visit Sir Rocco Fortes latest development, Verdura.

The eighty-minute drive from Palermo airport to the Verdura Golf and Spa Resort provides a glimpse of just how beautiful and seemingly unspoilt Sicily is. Quiet roads took me through a largely rural landscape of citrus groves, olive trees and vineyards which, added to the sublime coastline, explained Sir Rocco Forte’s delight in securing oceanfront property upon which he instructed noted architect Kyle Phillips (Kingsbarns, The Grove) to create a golfing experience worthy of its location.

Having scoured the area, Sir Rocco eventually settled on a flat piece of agricultural land near the ancient town of Sciacca, on the south coast of Sicily, which he particularly liked for its “away from it all” seclusion. A keen golfer himself, he explained to me at a brief meeting in London, prior to my visit, that he liked and shared Phillips’ philosophy on course design, feeling that it mirrored his own approach to hotels. ‘What he wanted was an original idea – one that would provide something unique for this part of the world.

Phillips duly obliged, carving out two courses that closely intertwine as they play through the Sicilian landscape. In keeping with design principles that emphasize the use of contours to create strategy’, Verdura features gently undulating fairways and has a pleasing linksy feel. The strength of both layouts rests with a series of holes running hard by the sea – given a half-decent wind you might even feel the sea-spray on your face standing on the green at the par-four 8th on the West Course.
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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 4:53 pm

The Real Deal

Yas Links is like nothing you have ever seen in the UAE.  It’s a nod to tradition in a wonderful setting.

When it comes to Abu Dhabi’s grand masterplan, Yas Links Golf Club is something of an anomaly. You only have to look at the neighbouring structures of Ferrari World, the Yas Marina Circuit and the chameleonic Yas Hotel to appreciate the emirate’s taste for the futuristic. And yet Yas Links is a tribute to an era where golfers played in plus fours, smoked pipes and answered to names like Old Tom Morris: An era about as far removed from modern Abu Dhabi as you can get. The most amazing thing about the course is, simply, that it works. In this hot, desert climate, the concept of emulating a seaside Scottish links appears absurd at first, but Yas Links is remarkably authentic, from the wispy fescue grass to the crumpled dunes and the hickory flagsticks. Yas has forgone the extravagance so pronounced in other new golf courses here with a minimalist approach that is both welcome and refreshing.

Credit must go to the developers, Aldar, for having the willingness to attempt such an audacious project, but American designer Kyle Phillips is the star, bringing his vision of a modern links course to life in dramatic fashion on the gently curved shoreline of Yas Island.

“What makes the course so intriguing is how traditional it is, because  nothing like that has ever been attempted before in the UAE,” says Phillips (who is the designer behind acclaimed modern Scottish classics Kingsbarns and Dundonald).
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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 2:34 pm

Three courses to be built at resort in South Korea

This year a trio of U.S. architects will make a little personal history at a resort in the capital of Gangwon Province in northern South Korea.

Each of the architects — Arthur Hills, Kyle Phillips and Tom Weiskopf — will be working in South Korea for the first time. Their courses are to serve as drawing cards for the Sanyosoo resort outside Chuncheon, a city of about 265,000 that’s roughly 50 miles northeast of Seoul.

Besides the golf courses, Sanyosoo will feature some houses, a large hotel and a shopping area. The developer is AM Engineering, a Seoul-based golf construction company led by Moon-Hwan “Dawson” Ahn. AM has built dozens of courses since it was founded in the mid 1990s, including Club at Nine Bridges on Jeju Island and Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon.

Sanyosoo is AM’s first development venture. The company broke ground on the resort’s 7,400-yard Yosoo course earlier this year and expects to open it in 2011. The course was designed in house, but Steve Forrest, a principal of Hills’ Toledo, Ohio-based firm, is acting as the design consultant.

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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 10:55 am

On Site: Verdura Golf Resort

Italy, as this magazine has not been shy to point out, has almost everything in place to be one of the world’s greatest golf destinations. It just needs more golf. So those of us who love both golf and Italy were cheered when the new Verdura resort, developed by British hotelier Sir Rocco Forte, and featuring two eighteen hole courses (plus a nine hole par three track) designed by Kyle Phillips, opened, quietly, late last summer.

Verdura closed for the winter, partly as a result of the well-publicised financial difficulties of its parent company, partly in order to allow the team to work on the golf courses, and partly because the Sicilian climate, though delightful from early spring through to late autumn, is not that conducive to attracting tourists in the dead of winter. The Forte company having secured its future with a new financing package, the resort has opened for its first full season with a sense of optimism about the place.

First the good bits: Sicily is a beautiful island, with mountains, beaches and culture all in plentiful supply. Verdura sits on a really special piece of property, all 270 hectares (550 acres) of it; hemmed in by hills, it spills gently down to the water’s edge, creating sea views from most parts of the site, plus a sense of seclusion from the outside world.

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posted by Kellie McCoy @ 10:21 am