Swan's passage to India
The Karnataka Golf Association course in Bangalore, India, is to be renovated by British firm Swan Golf Designs.
Following Howard Swan's initial evaluation of the course, the club's council and membership approved the two-year renovation which began in January 2007.
Each phase will take six months, being completed with the regrassing of greens with dwarf Bermuda, and fairways and roughs with TIFWAY 419. Each will be completed and grown in before the monsoon season. The renovation works, which will encompass a lengthening of the course to some 7,200 yards, some design revisions to improve safety together with greens, tees and bunkers reconstruction throughout, and extensive fairway drainage. Swan is at the early stages of seven other projects in the country together with its partner Golf Designs India.
The firm has also announced its first foray into Slovakia, winning the commission to design the Karlov Dvor Golf Resort north-east of Bratislava, on the banks of the Danube.
The country has, to date, some four or five courses but this 27-hole development will represent the first close to Bratislava itself.
Swan's Croatian architect, Ljubica Jovetic Cook, has designed an eighteen-hole course of tournament standard – 7,150 yard par 72, with six threes, six fours and six fives – and a nine-hole family course. Construction should start in summer 2007, with completion in 2008 and opening in late 2009.