Sandy Lane: the Old Nine, the Country Club and the Green Monkey

A winter visitor’s idea

Sandy Lane began with a winter visitor from England who first came to Barbados in 1946 as a guest at Glitter Bay House. He fell for the island over the 25 winters he spent here and built a home on the west coast. His idea for a hotel and golf course took shape on the old Sandy Lane sugar plantation, where, as the resort tells it, hundreds of ancient mahogany trees stretched down to the beach.

The architects were Happy Ward and Jimmy Walker. Once permission was granted to move the west-coast road 500 feet inland, building began in 1958, and the hotel welcomed its first guests in 1961 with 52 bedrooms, the mahogany trees left in place.

The hotel sits within an ancient mahogany grove on the Platinum Coast of St. James, close to Holetown and Paynes Bay, and today has 113 rooms, suites and penthouses alongside The Villa, a five-bedroom house. It later passed to Trust House Forte, and when Granada took over that company the hotel was put up for sale.

The Old Nine

The original golf course, now the Old Nine, opened the same year. Constructed in 1961, it meanders through the estate: 3,345 yards, par 36. The resort calls it a favourite with repeat guests, and its elevated par-three seventh is still a favourite hole.

The Old Nine was built along with the hotel in 1961, and Sandy Lane has been known for its golf courses since the hotel first opened.

Rebuilding, and two Fazio courses

When the hotel changed hands again, five people who had long loved it became its owners. They closed it, demolished it and rebuilt it, taking great care to protect the mahogany trees. The new Sandy Lane reopened on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 2001, in the same neo-Palladian style, with 45 holes of golf, two of the courses designed by Tom Fazio. The estate grew from 380 to 830 acres in the process.

The Country Club is a Fazio design of 7,060 yards, par 72, and hosted the 2006 World Golf Championships World Cup, won by Germany’s Bernhard Langer and Marcel Siem. The Green Monkey, also by Fazio, followed in 2004: 7,343 yards, par 72, blasted out of an old limestone quarry above the Caribbean Sea.

The two later courses are 18-hole championship layouts, and the Country Club hosted the 2006 World Golf Championships World Cup, which was won by Germany.

Playing at Sandy Lane

The Green Monkey is an exclusive privilege of resort guests, with only ten tee times a day. All three courses are booked through the golf reservations team, caddies are mandatory, and there is a 450-yard driving range, a practice bunker and a putting green.

The clubhouse has locker rooms, shoe and club rental, GPS-equipped golf carts and refreshment service, and the Country Club restaurant at the clubhouse serves breakfast and lunch.

Beyond Sandy Lane, the island has other courses. Royal Westmoreland’s championship course winds through the hills of St. James among the estate’s homes, and Apes Hill, higher in the hills, has a championship course and the Little Apes par-three course. On the south coast, Barbados Golf Club at Durants is the island’s public course.

Our advice: reserve tee times well ahead in the winter season, start with the Old Nine to see where it all began, and save the Green Monkey for a day when you are staying at the resort.