Only a few golf clubs welcomed the beautiful people and the best amateurs. Since that time golf has become professionalized, the courses have multiplied, and the entire South of Europe has been lined with kilometers of greens to welcome players from the North all year long. In these times of global leisure, and the enlarging of the big European market, what are the Côte d’Azur’s selling points?

The First Golden Age
After Lord Brougham launched Cannes in the middle of the 19th century, the Russian nobility quickly found their way to the place, and of course, the brother of Tsar Alexander III, the Grand-Duc Michel was forced to move there in exile because he married below himself. But he became bored.  Among his many distractions was hunting, in Scotland, where he discovered golf, at St. Andrews. When he returned to the Côte d’Azur, he looked for land to build his course on, and discovered a vast pine forest in Mandelieu where 9 holes were inaugurated March 17th 1892, the beginnings of the future ”old course” of Mandelieu. A year later, the train station Mandelieu-La-Napoule, nearby, welcomed the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean line. Easy of communication marked the development of both Cannes and golf: in 1894, the Valescure Golf Course opened up, a true English enclave near Saint-Raphael. For the British were definitely the first to promote golf on the continent to occupy their winters (“looking for strawberries”, as one said at the time), to their advantage and exclusive usage until the French elite got in on the game. Up until World War I, constructions followed one another: the Hyères Golf Club, the one at Nice in Cagnes-sur-Mer, Sospel (linked by a tramway in Menton), Costabelle, and finally, Mont-Agel, the only survivor of the quintet which was later devoured by hearty real-estate appetites.

Golf became one of high society’s favorite “leisure activities” of the moment, no one referred to it as a sport at the time.  One was more concerned about elegance of style and painless physical activities than about high scores and good exercise, but little thought was given to economic aspects. At that time, building a golf course had more to do with sponsorship and the satisfaction of a passion than a rational investment. And its upkeep is the same price as any expensive hobby!

Between two Wars
After the brutal and deadly shock of the First World War, the Côte d’Azur quickly returned to its “normal” existence. The aristocracy was more and more in competition with the industrials and the financiers, certain of whom largely profited by the war years, but also by stars of cinema and literature. Having become too small, the Mandelieu Golf Course was enlarged to 18 holes by the great architect Harry Shapland Colt, That was still not enough for the 1,000 club members in 1925, and lines formed from the start. Then a group of British and French found land at the foot of Mougins and created a private club reserved to 300 members. Among them, the Ducs of Mouchy and Vendôme, the Aga Khan, the king of Sweden, Edouard de Rothschild, commoners like Guinness or Weisweiller, and a string of barons from across the Channel and majors from the Indian Army under the presidency of Lord Derby, and Cyrille, the inevitable Russian Grand-Duc, also having escaped from the extermination of the Romanoffs to exile. Two other golf courses appeared between wars, Beauvallon in 1923 and Biot in 1930. That would be all for the time, as the Stock Market Crash in 1929 and the Second World War put an end to – and for quite some time – leisure and the idle, the Belle Epoque’s glossy deliquescence and its golfers, even if the latter continued their practice as best they could until the occupation of the “free zone”.

After the War, Golf on the Côte is half asleep
1945 isn’t 1918, and the return to peace is  not comparable. The slaughter and destruction was even more gigantic during the second war, economic, social and political balances had been upset. Thinking had changed. The golden era of the idle had evolved, the war destroyed privileges and often revenues. Old Europe had been devastated. To speak more anecdotally about tourism (and golf) on the Côte d’Azur, most of the British became scarce. Golf courses had to adapt to another rhythm to survive or develop, with a whole new revolution, the change in seasons!

Until then, golf courses were open from November to end-April, for the winter season of Northern Europeans and a few Americans, sprinkling systems were thus rudimentary, left to the seasonal climate, confined mainly to the greens and mostly manual.  In summer, the grass slept.  Created in 1936, paid vacation brought vacation time to the summer months, and all levels of society followed.  If they wanted to meet new demands, golf courses had to install automatic sprinklers, plan for water resources, and plant seeds adapted to summer heat, all of which represent considerable investment, often out of reach of a club’s means.  Certain courses didn’t make it and at the beginning of 1960, only Valescure, Monte-Carlo, Mandelieu, Cannes-Mougins, Beauvallon and Biot remained.  That was too few to meet the new challenge that Portugal and Spain were quick to defy.  They were armed to welcome golfers of the economic boom after the war The Costa del Sol and Algave became the refuge of those migrating throughout the year, in particular, thanks to enormous economic aid- ridiculously low loans, land that was practically given away, and the absence of ecological legislation. Fortunes were made, at the sacrifice of unprecedented concreting of the coast; and sometimes, golf courses were only a pretext. However these countries soon realized that they were a good tourist bet, as demonstrated by the golf factories of La Manga or Nueva Andalucia in Spain, and Vilamoura or Quinta do Lago in Portugal.

In France, golf is still a sport of the elite, of which no official organization suspects the potential. Because there is no real project, individual as well as audacious initiatives are necessary to finally get things moving on the Côte d’Azur.  That is how Opio Valbonne in 1963, Valcros in 1964 saw the light, and the “new” Cannes-Mougins, revised, corrected, transformed, lengthened, golf made up of shareholders who set the pace for new development.

The 80’s and 90’s, a profusion of Inaugurations
After certain logical conclusions and effective lobbying, government officials have realized that golf can be a creator of jobs and important economic benefits, but it can also represent a ‘reservoir” of green spaces, a safeguard against total urbanization of land.  Revision by the Regional planning and development program in 1987 makes it possible to identify  future golf sites, at least in the Cannes-Grasse-Antibes region, but private initiatives are what will bring them into existence.

The list is long, in the Var: Frégate, Saite-Maxime, Barbaroux, the Estérel, Roquebrune, Saint-Endreol, Taulane, or the crazy but defunct Lavandou. In the Alpes-Maritime: the Riviera, Royal Mougins, Saint Danat, Le Claux Amic, La Grand Bastide.  Famous architects have brought new life to a “Riviera” that had long been very British: Pete Dye, Cabell Robinson, Robert Trent Jones Sr and Jr, Gary Player, Ronald Fream, Robert von Hagge have inscribed an American aesthetic in the Southern landscapes where it’s necessary to Practice a “target golf” that the traditional players of the Côte are not necessarily familiar with. Certain of these courses have quickly established financial balance, others have passed through several hands before becoming stable.

After this bulimia of courses around the 1980’s and 90’s, one had to wait a long time for new constructions. Prince de Provence dates from this period, but numerous problems are holding back the operation.  As for Gassin, it’s an old project whose birth has not been easy either, but the baby seems healthy.

From the private to the Public, mixed status  
One can find practically every statute under the sun among the golf courses of the Côte d’Azur, from the most private (Prince de Provence) to the most commercial (L’Estérel, La Grande Bastide, Four Seasons in Terre Blanche), including a golf course with membership (Saint Donat), an association with shares (Cannes-Mougins), a golf club reserved to home owners (Gassin), a golf club directed by a sole owner (Taulane, Royal Mougins). The only thing missing is a real public golf course which trains new golfers, except Valgarde Golf Course. In order to do this, there are a few “practice courses” in Nice, or the 9 holes of Saint-Phillippe in Sophia-Antipolis.

Most of the golf courses of the Côte d’Azur are membership based, with diverse ways of implementing it.  It makes more sense not to chase off visitors paying green-fees, this is the best way to assure a club’s regular economic balance, to absorb shocks and also to meet the needs of regional players.  For Golf courses no longer find themselves in the situation of old, getting by essentially with money from residents of the Riviera, between November and April or May.  Today, the more members a golf club has, the more difficult it is to accommodate players buying green fees.  Moreover, the Côte d’Azur has evolved considerably: its image of an area for the idle retired is only partially true, it’s also a very active region and finally a tourist region. These three vocations make it different from its “competitors” The number of licensed members in clubs by age group allow for the making of this new and objective reality.  It’s only natural that the PACA region counts more players over 60 than the national average, more people are willing to retire in Antibes than Valenciennes.  But, for the other age groups, there is no obvious imbalance. In fact, the Côte d’Azur both sociologically and economically more closely resembles Florida than the Costa del Sol or the South of Turkey.  And, the diversity of what the clubs offer reflects this difference.

The Future, and Facing the Competition
Who are the current biggest rivals of the Côte d’Azur in golf tourism? The Costa del Sol in Spain, the Algarve in Portugal, Antalya in Turkey. Their characteristics are concentration of a very restricted geographical perimeter and lots of courses, locations near big hotels and hotel residences, and often, the offer of several courses on the same site (which is rarely the case here). What’s more, the construction of these courses has been made easier by political and economical backing, by resolute investment policies.  Finally, most of these golf courses having very few members, reservations can be made well in advance. Hotels have information about vacancies, and “tour operators” benefit from almost total freedom. You only need to go online to see and take advantage of the great golfing trips offered.

However, none of these countries can offer what the Côte d’Azur has to offer. In other words, it isn’t in its best interest to put itself on the same level as Spain, Portugal or Turkey, and should cultivate its differences. The difference in courses, their aesthetic diversity, the quality of the golf and after-golf, the notoriety and prestige of the Côte d’Azur are irrefutable arguments. What else is there to do after golfing in Faro, Marbella, or Antalya?

In fact, even if numerous golf clubs have hotels nearby, they don’t exactly correspond to the notion of “resort” which has been initiated by Americans. Only the Four Seasons Provence in Terre Blanche, with its two courses, luxury hotel and building land, its welcoming policies, all correspond to the most modern idea that one might have about this type of product, such as one might find at Grand Cypress in Orlando or Pinehurst in North Carolina.

But should we transform the Côte d’Azur into another Costa del Golf? Topography problems (building a golf course costs a lot of money), the availability of land and the price of real estate, regulations, investment returns make it difficult to cover the territory with golf courses. We should play up our differences, quality, and personality. The Côte d’Azur is the Côte d’Azur. It’s much more than a land of golf, but it’s also a region where golf is a significant factor. There are an estimated 100,000 golfing tourists on the Côte d’Azur, and more than 800 million Euros spent annually by the golfing population in the region. People do not come here to play golf the same way they do in St Andrews or Marbella. One comes to the Côte because it’s a pleasant place, and then one plays golf. And what a game!