Golf Club Grand Ducal de Luxembourg

Golf Club Grand Ducal de Luxembourg: in addition to designing some of Belgium's best "Royal" courses, Tom Simpson (or at least his ethos) also crossed the border into Luxembourg. His designs inspired what many regard as the Grand Duchy's flagship golf course.

Like its "royal" Belgian cousins, Grand Ducal is a wonderfully laid out, parkland-cum-heathland course, where Scots pines are much in evidence. Although lacking the length of a modern-day championship layout, it will nonetheless test your shot-making every step of the way.

The ever-undulating design, roams through well-spaced tree-lined avenues, where ball finding after an occasional wayward drive is generally not too difficult. The layout includes several attractive elevated-tee to elevated-green par-3s and par-4s. Arranged in two nine-hole loops, the layout's par-4 9th and par-5 18th are both handsomely framed by the old-worldly pitched-roof clubhouse.

With excellent maintenance and a pleasing variety of holes, your short game will need to be in good order to score well here. The handsomely bunker-defended greens are typically a good size, and home to all manner of fiendish slopes and borrows, some obvious, others less so. Your driving will also need to be straight and true to keep you safely on the fairways, and out of the trees.

The two nine-hole loops weave their way through this splendidly mature woodland, although the peace and quiet enjoyed by golfers in days of old is a little more interrupted nowadays ... especially at the par-5 11th and par-3 12th holes. Luxembourg's airport is situated just to the south of the course and the main east-west motorway through Luxembourg just to the north.

Pick of the holes: the outward half is arguably the better of the two nines, although the course does deliver an excellent finishing stretch comprising the par-4 16th, short par-3 17th and par-5 18th. The slightly uphill, beautifully tree-lined par-3 14th, and par-4 9th with its clubhouse backdrop, are also noteworthy.