Bale ready for a round on back-garden golf course
WALES star Gareth Bale has finished transforming his back garden into some of the most iconic holes in golf.
It was first reported in 2015 that the Real Madrid ace, an avid golf fan, was embarking on a project that would see the 17th hole at Sawgrass, the “postage stamp” 8th at Royal Troon and the fabled 12th at Augusta National recreated at his South Wales home.
Architect James Edwards drew up the famous holes and worked with Southwest Greens and golf course shaper Mark Ely to provide the Welsh winger with the perfect practice facility.
“I had a lovely bit of land here and it was something that I really wanted to do and I decided that I would love to make a dream come true and build a mini golf course in my house,” Bale said.
“I did my research online and I found Southwest Greens. I wanted to do a lot of low maintenance. We came up with a big concept of what I wanted to do. We loved the idea of it and went from a plain piece of land to building what we have now.
“It was a lot of hard work and a lot of craftmanship. It’s so much better than I ever thought it could be.”
Bale is currently in Nanning, China, with Ryan Giggs’ Wales squad ahead of this week’s China Cup.
President of Southwest Greens, Kevin Holinaty, said: “We worked with Gareth to decipher what his wishes were, being that he’s a keen golfer and like all of us that like to play the game, you have your favourite holes, you have your dream scenarios. He came to us with that.
“We came up with a design that we wanted to move forward with.
“There were a few ideas going back and forth and in the end he chose these three symbolic, iconic golf holes.
“They’re not exact replicas, they’re ‘in the spirit of’ these three holes and it was done like that.”
The project took about six months and has actually been finished for two years. However, a golf course needs a lot of time to mature so all parties have had to wait before revealing the finished article.
Bale was keen to be involved from the beginning in all areas of the design, with meetings held in Madrid and Wales to fine tune the details.
He asked the designers to fit the three holes on the site as sensitively as possible at their full length. Designer Mr Edwards said: “This unique brief was an incredible thrill for us. The only real challenge was the weather. The site was extremely wet and the construction was delayed many times. The perseverance was worthy of an award!
“The long views, mature backdrop and width of landscape experienced at the site are perfect for the such a garden facility to frame the holes in their best light.”
Mr Holinaty agreed that the Welsh weather was one of the biggest challenges they faced.
He said: “In total, it was approximately six months. It took longer than we would normally want it to take mainly due to weather challenges. It was an especially wet time for us when we were building it, so we had some challenges there.
“So there was the rough shaping and grading that needed to happen, moving the earth around where it needed to go as a starting point.
“Then the synthetics went in and then we moved to the finishing phase. That was a process too and you need to rely on dry days and sunny days for the seed to take and that type of thing. It’s not an easy process – it requires a lot of knowledge and skill. We have a lot of world-class shapers in our team that know what they’re doing.
“We were able to achieve what we needed to achieve. If you need to create an exact replica of something, the topography has to cooperate and that is never the case. You always have to improvise and compromise on site and that’s what we did. We made it work with the site that we were given and I think it works really well.
“It sits really well in this space and what we’re very pleased with is the view from each tee. That’s so important in golf. The way that this plot sets up, it really works nicely in that regard.”