Hardelot Les Pins
Restoring the back-nine of a Tom Simpson masterpiece
Hardelot Les Pins is a beautiful French links course that was designed by Tom Simpson in 1930. The course over time has become more and more wooded, and was feeling very tight in places when we started work on the course with our French partner Patrice Boissonnas in late 2012.
The remit from the owner of Hardelot, Open Golf, was to do what we felt necessary to restore the course back to its former grandeur. The areas we focused on were green extensions, where possible the widening of the fairways, rebuilding tees and restoring the original sand faces, rough edges and scale of the bunkers.
After restoring the front nine holes in 2012-13, this year our work focus was on the back nine holes. Again all the bunkers were restored and some lost bunkers were re-established. We also rebuilt one green (hole 13) that was not a Simpson original and expanded the putting surfaces on greens 14 and 15 back to their original sizes. Another important area of work was the widening of playing corridors on several holes, bringing back some of the playing strategy that had been lost over time.
Work was done by the contractor John Grealey, assisted by the local greenkeeping team.