La Réserve Golf Links — the Indian Ocean’s new No.1 golf course

Two years after it opened, La Réserve Golf Links Mauritius is being talked about the way Royal County Down and Cabot Cliffs were once talked about. Only this one sits on the southern coast of the Bel Ombre estate, alongside a UNESCO biosphere reserve, with the 2010 Open champion’s name on the design board.

If you follow new course openings the way some people follow vintages, La Réserve Golf Links Mauritius is the one to put a pin in for 2026. It opened on 1 December 2023, co-designed by South African architect Peter Matkovich and 2010 Open champion Louis Oosthuizen. In twenty-four months it has gone from “promising new layout” to Indian Ocean’s Best Golf Course 2025 at the World Golf Awards and Golfweek’s No.1 in Africa and 28th in the world for 2026. I’m Simon Crawley, GPH’s Mauritius desk. See all our Mauritius golf packages, or read on for the course that’s reshaping the conversation about Indian Ocean golf next winter.

Why is La Réserve Golf Links suddenly the Indian Ocean’s best?

The headline numbers are unusually clean for a course this new. World Golf Awards, voted by industry and travelling players, named La Réserve Golf Links the Indian Ocean’s Best Golf Course 2025. That sits on top of World’s Best New Golf Course 2024, awarded almost the moment the grass had grown in. Then in 2026, Golfweek, the American rater whose lists move the needle for travelling golfers, placed La Réserve No.1 in Africa and 28th worldwide. Three different judging panels, three different briefs, the same verdict.

World Golf Awards. Indian Ocean’s Best Golf Course 2025. Golfweek No.1 in Africa, 28th worldwide for 2026. World’s Best New Golf Course 2024. GEO Certified.

The fourth award matters as much as the first three, even if it gets fewer column inches. La Réserve is GEO Certified, the gold-standard sustainability mark for golf, granted only after a third-party audit of water, energy, biodiversity and community impact. For a course built next to a UNESCO biosphere, that wasn’t optional. It was the price of entry.

“The first and only contemporary links course in the Indian Ocean” — what that actually means

The phrase comes straight from the official Heritage Resorts description, and it’s worth unpacking, because “links” has been used very loosely in tropical golf marketing for a long time. A links is built on coastal land: sandy, fast-draining soil, firm running fairways, exposed wind, native rough rather than tree-lined corridors, greens that reward the run-up shot as much as the high approach. It’s the kind of golf you grew up watching on Sky every July.

That category didn’t really exist in this ocean. Mauritius and its neighbours have built parkland courses, lagoon-edge courses, even mountain-backdrop courses. None of them contemporary links, with the bouncing fairways and short, scuffed approaches that change the game. La Réserve is the first. That’s the “first and only” Heritage are claiming, and on the evidence of two years of play, it’s holding up.

What it means in practice: the ball runs. You’ll hit chasers off the tee that wouldn’t move ten yards at a parkland course. You can putt from twenty yards short of the green. The wind off the Indian Ocean isn’t a decorative element. It’s the architect’s third partner. Bring your low ball flight and your imagination. The high cut that wins you Sunday medals at home is going to feel a yard out of place here.

The designers: Peter Matkovich and Louis Oosthuizen, a meaningful partnership

The design team is the other reason rankings panels paid attention. Peter Matkovich is the senior South African golf architect who also routed Le Château, the sister course at Heritage Golf Club, and a long list of southern African layouts. He knows how golf in this climate behaves. What the grass does in March, how the wind moves across the south coast in July.

Louis Oosthuizen is the active tour player half. The 2010 Open champion at St Andrews, multiple major runner-up since, with a swing the BBC commentators describe as “the prettiest in the modern game.” His involvement is the design-credit detail that gets a course on a UK golfer’s bucket list. Not because tour players always make great designers (they don’t), but because Oosthuizen the Open champion knows what a links is supposed to feel like, and Matkovich the Mauritian veteran knows what this particular piece of coast can carry. The pairing is the point.

Where does La Réserve sit on the island?

The course occupies a stretch of the southern coast at Bel Ombre, alongside the UNESCO Man-and-Biosphere Reserve and within the wider Domaine de Bel Ombre. A 2,500-hectare estate whose original 2,200-acre concession dates to 1765, with a sugar factory built around 1802 and a history that includes the Northern Irish botanist Charles Telfair, who took ownership in 1816 and gave the flagship hotel its name.

That setting matters for play. The reserve immediately inland gives the course its quiet. No traffic, no resort sprawl across the back nine. And it’s the reason the biodiversity audit for GEO certification was passable in the first place. From the round, you get glimpses of endemic vegetation that you don’t on the more commercial east coast.

Where to stay to play La Réserve — Le Telfair or Awali?

The course is shared by Heritage Le Telfair and its sister property Heritage Awali. They sit at opposite ends of roughly a kilometre of Bel Ombre beach, both five-star, both with full estate access. But they’re tonally very different stays.

Le Telfair is the plantation-style, colonial-inspired hotel. The one most British golfers picture when they imagine Mauritius. On bed and breakfast or all-inclusive, the restaurant cast includes Annabella’s, Gin’Ja, Le Palmier, The Cavendish Bar & Lounge, C Beach Club, plus dining up at Le Château de Bel Ombre and at both golf clubhouses. It is also, as of 2025, the World’s Best Golf Hotel at the World Golf Awards. A meaningful double, given the course on its doorstep took the regional course title in the same ceremony.

Heritage Le Telfair — 7 nights bed & breakfast with both Heritage courses, from £889pp. All-inclusive upgrade from £1,445pp. See the Le Telfair package →

Heritage Awali is the all-inclusive-only sister, with a deliberately different identity: African-inspired interiors, darker wood, warmer tones, graphic patterns. The name itself is Swahili. “The importance of origins, a return to what is meaningful.” Restaurants here are Savana, Zafarani, Infinity Blue, Le Boma, Kizuri, Zenzi Bar, with shared access across the wider estate to C Beach Club, Le Château de Bel Ombre and both clubhouses. For golfers who want their food and drink wrapped into one number, Awali is the cleaner answer.

Heritage Awali — 7 nights all-inclusive with both Heritage courses, from £939pp. See the Awali package →

The practice ground at Le Château — and why it matters

The practice hub for both courses sits at Le Château, and it’s the most serious piece of practice infrastructure I’ve walked round on the island. There’s a double-ended driving range, a dedicated chipping and pitching area, a 1,000 m² putting green and a 9-hole short course for warm-ups, with PGA pros on site for lessons.

If you’ve never played links, this is where you spend an hour the day before. The 9-hole short course is the rehearsal room for the bump-and-run shots La Réserve will ask of you the next morning.

What else is on the Bel Ombre estate?

The reason a week here doesn’t feel like a golf-only trip, and the reason wives and non-playing partners come back happy, is the rest of the estate. Le Château de Bel Ombre, the restored 1800s manor up on the hilltop, is the estate’s fine-dining venue, with cuisine consulted by the Michelin-starred Lyon chef Christian Têtedoie. The setting alone, colonial veranda, gardens, distance views, is one of those evenings you remember.

Christian Têtedoie’s hilltop kitchen at Le Château de Bel Ombre. The restored 1800s manor on the 2,500-hectare estate that Charles Telfair took ownership of in 1816. It’s the evening on the trip you’ll send pictures home of.

Spa-side, the Seven Colours Spa at Heritage Le Telfair runs to 3,000 square metres, with nine treatment rooms (six doubles, two outdoor suites, and a honeymoon suite), separate steam and sauna facilities for ladies and gents, and a vitality pool with hydromassage. The signature is the Seven Colours Signature Massage. The Thémaé tea-ritual treatments, Pure’thé, Vitali’thé, Beau’thé, are the ones to book a week in advance.

Rum drinkers, take a half day. The estate pours Chamarel, St Aubin and New Grove, and a private tasting at the Chamarel Distillery, around thirty minutes’ drive, is the best on-island rum experience I send clients to.

What’s worth knowing before you book

The drive from SSR airport is roughly 50 minutes / 40 km, among the shorter transfers on the island. Both Heritage hotels share the same kilometre of Bel Ombre beach, so the swim, the snorkel and the sundowner are identical. What changes between Le Telfair and Awali is the food, the décor and the meal-plan. For golfers, the practical question is whether you want the discipline of bed and breakfast or the unwind of all-inclusive. La Réserve plays the same either way.

And don’t underestimate how much wind affects scoring. This is a links. The mid-handicapper who shoots their handicap at parkland courses on the east coast will not shoot their handicap here on day one. By day three, with the practice ground put to use, they tend to.

Simon’s quick take

• Best for: UK golfers who track world rankings and want to play the No.1 course in Africa before everyone else catches up.
• Worth knowing: “Links” here means firm, fast and exposed. The running ball is the right shot. Spend an hour on the 9-hole short course at Le Château before you tee up on La Réserve.
• Simon’s tip: Pair Heritage Le Telfair (bed & breakfast, from £889pp) with two evenings at Le Château de Bel Ombre. The restaurant is worth a flight on its own, and the colonial veranda after a links round is the picture you’ll send home.

By Simon Crawley, Manager, Golf Planet Holidays · 27 Years in Golf Travel.