Royal Golf Marrakech

Royal Golf Marrakech opened in 1927, making it the second-oldest course in Morocco, and the century of growth it has accumulated shows in everything from the shadow cast by its eucalyptus trees to the particular quality of silence between holes. The 15,000 trees planted and tended across the grounds over generations give the course the character of an established botanical garden as much as a sporting facility. Narrow fairways run beneath tall canopies of cypress, palm, and centenary eucalyptus; shade at midday arrives from above rather than from the mountains. The main layout is an 18-hole Old Course of par 72 spanning 5,871 metres, designed originally in the late 1920s by a professional golfer with a passion for botany, and remodelled in the 1930s into the configuration largely played today. A 9-hole Ménara course, inaugurated in 2008 and covering 3,072 metres, extends the offering for shorter rounds. The Old Course demands precision over power; its tight lines and mature planting impose a game of placement and patience. The clubhouse received a prize from the American trade publication Golf Inc. for the quality of its design. It houses a restaurant serving lunch daily, and its terrace looks out over grounds that feel genuinely unhurried. Royal Golf was favoured by the late King Hassan II and, decades earlier, by a series of international figures whose presence is woven into the course's institutional memory. That history sits lightly; what remains is a course that has had a century to grow into itself, and shows it.