Poland’s number one golf course, Gary Player designed Modry Las, have extended their golf offering with Orli Las, a championship course in miniature with multiple tee options.
Modry Las Golf Club’s much-anticipated nine-hole course is being described as one the most exciting new courses in Europe. Measuring just 560 meters (613 yards) and covering 2.5 hectares (6.2 acres), Orli Las is a championship course in miniature with multiple tee options, lush tree-lined fairways and infinity greens.
Set out in an enchanted Polish forest with stunning lakeside views, Orli Las may appear unassuming on paper, but it punches well above its weight, as the resort’s Director of Development Pamela Gromadzki explained.
“Orli Las is a diamond of a short course but it is testing,” she said. “It does that rare and wonderful thing of creating options for higher handicappers while setting a stern challenge for more experienced golfers. It is a very beautiful and challenging course – that’s what makes it special.”
Holes raning from 31 to 91 meters
With the longest hole on the championship course at Modry Las measuring 526 meters (575 yards), the newly opened Orli Las seems diminutive by comparison – the longest hole on the new layout is just 91 meters (100 yards). But its demure nature is its greatest asset according to the man behind the design.
The South African golf course designer Theo Geertshuis says he broke established rules in order to create a course that focused on short-game skills rather than power off the tee. To fulfil his plan, the designer even installed flag sticks that were a third shorter than normal to give the impression of length when there wasn’t any (the shortest hole on the course measures just 31 meters (34 yards).
“I had never done a short-game course before, but I had visited many,” Geertshuis admits. “I wanted to knock people’s socks off. I wanted people to play Orli Las and think that it was a fantastic little track, but not be able to put their finger on why it was so good.
The average size of the greens at Orli Las is just 120 square meters but contained within each are numerous pin placements and countless breaks and borrows. Each green features undulations and testing surrounds that offer various approach options or recovery routes. A pitch and putt course Orli Las certainly is not.
Read more: Modry Las Golf Club
