india Faldo Notches a Mega-Project

     The age of “signature” golf architecture hasn’t yet fully arrived in India. But Nick Faldo is doing his best to open the door for it.
     Faldo has been commissioned to design an 18-hole, “championship-standard” track for Sushant Megapolis, a 2,504-acre planned community that’s to be built in Greater Noida, the fast-growing, corporation-fueled satellite city outside New Delhi. The commission is the former British golf pro’s second in India, as his firm has also been slated to produce an 18-hole course for the Lavasa resort community in metropolitan Pune, in the state of Maharashtra.

     Sushant Megapolis is a high-profile venture that will serve as a big stage for Faldo’s work. It’s been master-planned to include a slew of houses, a biotechnology park, an “education zone” with schools for children of all ages, a “medicity” with “highly skilled and specialized doctors,” a sports academy with an equestrian center and polo fields, a handful of lakes and musical fountains, and a tennis academy branded by Mahesh Bhupathi, a Wimbledon doubles champion.
     The community’s developer, New Delhi-based Ansal Properties & Infrastructure, Ltd., calls the place “an employment-oriented, self-sustaining town of the future” and “a perfect blend of nature’s glory, modern infrastructure, elegance, and luxury.” If sales take off, the community can grow to 9,000 acres.
     API is developing a nearly identical community, Sushant Golf City, in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. The community will eventually feature an 18-hole course that’s been designed by Martin Hawtree, the third-generation British architect who created Donald Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Last year Pranav Ansal, API’s managing director, told an Indian construction journal that the course’s first nine holes have been opened.
     As for Faldo’s course outside Pune, it appears to be stuck in development mud. Faldo, who’s based in Windsor, England, got the commission in 2009 and has yet to break ground on the planned 18-hole course and Faldo-branded golf academy.
     Faldo is likewise waiting for API to set a construction schedule for the course at Sushant Megapolis. One of his associates recently told me that the firm is under contract but “awaiting further instruction.” That could explain why news of the commission hasn’t yet been posted on Faldo’s website.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the October 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.