Morocco – especially the historic city of Marrakech – has been something of a boom market for golf development in the last five years or so. There has been golf in Morocco for many years – a result of the royal family’s commitment to the game – but recently, tourist investment has accelerated, with the country’s year-round reliable weather and easy access from key European locations making it ‘the next big thing’. 

Cameron, formerly head professional at clubs such as Turnberry and Royal St George’s, has been based in Sicily for the last few years, working as director of golf at the Kyle Phillips-designed Verdura resort. 

Though its position in full view of the majestic Atlas mountains is a central part of Marrakech’s appeal, the area immediately around the city – where a substantial number of new golf developments have sprung up in recent years – is basically flat. The Assoufid property, though, is rather different – looking across from the course to the surrounding land shows what the site must have looked like before construction. It is pleasantly undulating, though not so steep as to be a tough walk, and has an abundance of natural feature, most obviously a dry river bed, or ‘shaaba’ in the local language, which comes into play several times on the back nine of Cameron’s design. It is, I think, clearly the most interesting piece of land that has been made available for development in the Marrakech area, and Cameron’s course makes good use of it.

Assoufid’s birth has been a protracted process. The course itself was built several years ago – this writer first visited the property some three years back, when the course was finished and playable, albeit obviously very young, but none of the supporting infrastructure had been started. Now, the course has its clubhouse, practice facilities and so on, though the hotel and housing that will be the core of the development is only just getting underway.

The course begins in relatively gentle fashion, but really hits its stride at the fifth hole, a good par four with an intimidating blind tee shot over a ridge. The front side returns to the clubhouse at the ninth, an excellent par three from a slightly elevated tee, featuring a green banked into a left to right sideslope. Somewhat unusually, Cameron has bunkered the high side of the green; missing left will leave either a tricky downhill bunker shot, or alternatively a very delicate pitch over the bunkers to a greensloping away. Missing on the right is probably a wiser course of action!

The back nine, though, is where the course really shows its quality. The tenth hole marks the first encounter with the shaaba, which runs in front of the green. The fairway is wide, and the tee shot seems, at first glance, fairly straightforward, but the hole doglegs slightly to the right, as well as diving downhill towards the creek just at the end of the landing zone. A safe tee shot out to the left will leave a much longer approach across the riverbed; better to bite off more and place the drive down the right side of the fairway. Should your approach go in the shaaba, it’s worth investigating – some balls will be playable, others will be among rocks. But certainly it is a better play to take enough club and make the carry in the first place!

Many will regard the par five fourteenth hole as the course’s most memorable. A clump of trees splits the landing zone, and the hole narrows progressively between the shaaba and the boundary fence as the green comes closer. It’s unarguably dramatic, but in my eyes the hole doesn’t quite work; the corridor is just not wide enough for a split fairway of this kind. Very long hitters may be able to carry a driver over the trees and bring the green in range in two, but for normal mortals the question is which narrow gap to aim for. Some, in truth, will be best placed to aim straight at the trees and trust that their miss will leave them in good position on either side; there does not appear to be a compelling advantage to one route over the other.

After finishing the fifteenth, golfers must double back along the edge of the shaaba for 200 yards or so to reach the next tee, a slightly worrisome walk if there is a group coming up the hole behind you. However, it’s worth the hike, as the finishing holes are the best stretch on the golf course. The sixteenth, a shortish par four, requires a drive across the river bed and a pitch to a green set into an amphitheatre in the hillside, while the par three seventeenth is played across the riverbed, an extremely strong hole. And the finisher is another good par four, with a slightly uphill drive where, as on the tenth, taking a tighter line can shorten the approach shot dramatically. The hole doglegs and rises sharply to the right after the landing zone, and a well hit drive played too far left can easily find bunkers on the far side of the fairway. The right hand line looks intimidating from the tee – bunkers and scrub threaten – but committing to that line and executing the shot can result in a very short iron for the final approach shot.

Niall Cameron may never have designed a course before Assoufid, but it’s clear that he has learned what makes for good golf holes during his long and varied career. The routing is strong – the course is an easy walk, with few awkward connections, apart from that walk back down the fourteenth – and the desert landscaping theme that has been adopted works on multiple levels. It isn’t an easy course to lose lots of balls on, and the desert areas have been cleared of most of the stones, so should you miss a fairway, it is likely you will at least have a shot. Where his inexperience is visible, though, is in the bunkers and greens. The bunkering is typically well placed, but a bolder touch could well have brought a more dramatic aesthetic – which would have suited the property – to bear. And the greens are mostly quite gentle – again, bolder putting surfaces would have made a good course stronger still. Nonetheless, if Cameron never gets to design another golf course, he can be happy to know that when called, he did a more than competent job; while the golfers who come to play Assoufid will get considerable pleasure from his work for many years to come.

This article first appeared in Golf Course Architecture - Issue 40