LES BORDES article by Tom Cox

I just came across this article written several years ago by Tom Cox.  In the article, Mr. Cox recounts his first adventure visiting Les Bordes.  He conveys, like a member of a secret sect, Les Bordes ineffable charms. 

(Below, you will find some excerpts from the article, which can be found  in it's entirety HERE  If this link does not work - search the article title. It was originally published in Financial Times)

September 6, 2008 

The hidden charms of Les Bordes

By Tom Cox

I’ve had some pretty ropey caddies in my time, but I’ve never had a donkey on the bag.
It’s not that I haven’t thought about it: there’s nothing I’d like better than a velvety-muzzled Abyssinian calculating my yardages or a Spotted Ass flopping down on the green beside me and reading the break on a tricky downhill par putt. The truth is simply that, what with my east Midlands upbringing, my long lay-off from golf in my twenties, the foot-and-mouth scare of 2001 and the purchase of my first electric trolley, donkeys and I just never seemed to intersect.

Had I grown up playing golf at Les Bordes, in the Loire valley, it could all have been so different. It was here, during the late 1980s, that razor and pen entrepreneur Baron Marcel Bich, the course’s late owner, held a legendarily avant-garde management training seminar for executives at his Bic corporation..... 

Some selected quotes from the article:
"Not long after I visited, I played my first round at St Andrews’ Old Course and broke 80, then went round the King’s Course at Gleneagles in 75. At Les Bordes, I played much, much better and, in two attempts, didn’t even manage to break 90. And I preferred every second of it."

"So why has Les Bordes remained such a secret over the years? One explanation is that Bich, who died in 1994, had a “build it and they will come” philosophy. Another is that everyone who plays here gets selfishly protective about it.... "

"What I did not see was the more insouciant cousin of the Tournament Players’ course at Sawgrass, each of whose 18 rampantly imaginative feats of risk-reward architectural perfectionism would merit the term “signature hole”, were they on virtually any other course. More than any indomitable top pro, Les Bordes is the golfing Terminator: it just keeps coming at you. Needless to say, I’ll be back."