What and amazing place!! Ile aux Cerfs Golf Club is an 18-hole, par-72 course on its own island in Mauritius. Designed by Bernhard Langer, it is a championship course of extraordinary concept and immaculate execution. All of the 18 holes of the Ile aux Cerfs Golf Club have wonderful views of the ocean, some where the ocean can be seen through the clearings in the forests and others where the fairways run right along the oceans edge.
Reputed to have cost around $11.5 million to construct, the course at Ile aux Cerfs (formerly known as Le Touessrok) is a prestigious IMG layout that bears the Bernhard Langer architectural stamp of approval. Debuting in 2003, it winds its way around the Ile aux Cerfs – a small island which lies just off Trou d’Eau Douce in Mauritius’s largest lagoon – with eighteen holes set out in an old sugar plantation.
Fringed by white sands and surrounded by the blue Indian Ocean, Ile aux Cerfs Golf Club features breathtaking views, with the holes snaking up and down the length of the island. There are nine lakes in all, with a number of holes requiring tee shots across sea inlets to the fairways. The water and the expansive bunkers of indigenous white sand set off the natural backdrop of trees and vegetation.
Each of the four short holes on the course is visually stunning, but the best of these is possibly the 125-yard 8th, where its pulpit green sits high above the fairway, surrounded by trees. The 337-yard 14th is another feature hole on the inward nine and this tempting short par four plays to a long, narrow green at the end of a short uphill approach.