– There is a journey of about ten minutes by van between the clubhouse and the 1st tee. It’s more than enough time to catch your breath and invoke all the saints. Any help is little before starting to play the Heritage La Reserve, the golf course that serves as the stage this year for the AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open which kicks off next Thursday. You start from the highest point of the course and from there you descend towards the Indian Ocean. The views are breathtaking. The danger of losing a ball is too.
– In 2025, a total of 42 tournaments were played on the DP World Tour. There were 989 triple bogeys and 180 quadruples. That is, an average per week of 23.54 and 4.28. At Heritage La Reserve in 2023, the first and only time until this year that it hosted the Mauritius Open, there were 39 triple bogeys and 15 quadruples in the four rounds. That is, close to the average for all of 2025 in terms of triple bogeys and almost four times more quadruples. Additionally, there were four quintuples.
– These cold facts serve to understand what awaits the players of the DP World Tour this week in Mauritius. The course is a paradise, a man-made links that looks like few others on a mobile camera. But it is also a score wrecker. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. If you go down the fairway, birdies/eagles can fall left and right, but if it’s a wayward week from the tee, hold on because you might not finish… The rough or tall grass area waiting for players who don’t go straight is a metre high. That is, a lost ball almost certainly. We will see many provisional balls and some will even have to hit again from the tee.
– Obviously, as a good links, although not natural, it is right next to the ocean. This means that the wind is almost always a protagonist. This week it will not be lacking. Today, Tuesday, in the practice round, they are playing with criminal gusts that sometimes exceed 50 kilometres per hour. It won’t be that much once the tournament starts on Thursday, but it won’t drop below 30 kilometres. Going straight becomes a bit more difficult.
– About 200 litres of water have fallen in recent days, but the course drains wonderfully and is almost perfect. In fact, it is expected that it won’t even be necessary to place in the first round. It will be decided at the last minute. The greens, however, will be slower than usual on the DP World Tour. It has to do with the wind. They will be around 10 on the stimpmeter.
– The Heritage La Reserve is a very peculiar course that reminds one of Tecina Golf in La Gomera. You climb to the highest point at the 1st tee and from there you descend to the water.
– If we take as a reference what happened in 2023 on this same course, the victory went to Louis Oosthuizen with -17, the top 10 was at -11 and the cut was made on Friday at -1.
– Pay close attention to Jayden Schaper, winner last Sunday at the Alfred Dunhill Championship. The South African finished sixth two years ago on this same stage. The best Spaniard was Santi Tarrio, eleventh, and Ángel Ayora, who played with an invitation, Ángel Hidalgo, and Alfredo García Heredia made the cut.
