What La Réserve Links changed on Mauritius
The island’s first true links opened in 2023 and shifted the centre of gravity south. We walked it into the wind to see whether the reputation holds.
For twenty years the centre of golf on Mauritius was the east coast. Belle Mare Plage had two courses, Anahita was half an hour away, and a trip here was in practice planned around that coast. Since 2023 that is no longer true.
A links, genuinely
La Réserve Golf Links lies inside Bel Ombre on the south coast, designed by Louis Oosthuizen and Peter Matkovich and shaped out of the dunes behind the beach. Par 72, 7,357 yards. It is called the Indian Ocean’s first genuine links, and unlike much else that gets called a links, the description holds.
The difference is not the view. The difference is that the ground joins in. On a resort course the ball lands and stops. Here it lands and carries on, and you have to decide where you want it to start running. It is a different kind of golf from the one most of us play at home, and the first round often goes on realising it.
The wind is the defence
Bel Ombre lies open to the south. La Réserve is the more exposed of Heritage’s two courses, and we consistently recommend early morning — not because the afternoon is impossible, but because it is a different course. The same hole can be two clubs apart between nine and three.
Play it into the wind and it is long. Play it downwind and it shortens in a way that tricks you into the wrong club into greens that are firmer than you expect. Both experiences are worth having, but they should not be the same round.
Forty-five holes on one estate
What is interesting is not only the course itself but what it does to the estate. La Réserve shares an estate with Le Château — Matkovich's 2004 course, laid around a nineteenth-century château — and together they make Heritage the island's only 45-hole property. The estate is 2 500 hectares, and both courses are in our trip — 35 minutes from Paradis, where we stay.
In practice that means you can play two entirely different courses on the same day without getting on a bus. Le Château is tree-lined, sheltered and asks you to read the layout correctly; La Réserve is open, hard and asks you to read the wind correctly. They are each other’s opposites, and they are fifteen minutes apart.
What it means for a week
Before 2023 the south coast was an excursion. Now it is a reason to go. Both courses are in our trip and lie 35 minutes from Paradis — which is the whole point of an island where no course is more than a good hour from another.
The green fee at La Réserve is at the upper end among the island’s courses. That is reasonable for a newly built links, and it is also a reason to play it when it is at its best rather than squeezing it in as a last round on the day you fly home.
The reputation holds. But it is not a course you tick off — it is a course you plan the week around.
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