Listen: Grande Mare redevelopment on course for 2025 completion

Stephen Lansdown said the project was still on target for August 2025, despite weather setbacks so far this year.

The first part of the new course is ready to bed down for seeding, and the Rue du Gele side of the course should start to ‘green up’ soon, while landscaping in the area will develop over the winter, as trees are planted.

The second phase of the course work is due to start in April 2024, while its academy area should start this autumn.

‘People will see that start to develop and that’s a major part of what we’re doing,’ Mr Lansdown said.

‘And then the clubhouse and everything else, we’re just getting the final sign-offs which we’ll do by September to get out for tender and then get that built, and that will be the target, to finish at the same time.’

• Listen to a full interview with Steve Lansdown on the latest Guernsey Press Sport Podcast

Mr Lansdown said it had been ‘fascinating’ to follow the development of the course and he was inspired by positive talk about the development.

‘We’re going to make it into a great course.'

‘I’m really excited about what’s happening and how it’s going to look when it’s finished. But obviously, it’s nowhere near there yet.’

While available space was a constraint, Mr Lansdown said it gave the opportunity to create a course offering a different kind of challenge.

‘If we can build a high quality course, which is different, a challenge in many ways, it doesn’t have to be that long because obviously we’re stuck with the area that we’ve got,’ he said.

‘It will be a challenging course, it will be fantastic to play. And then the word will spread within golfing circles and obviously we’ll promote it on an international basis. And people will want to come and play. It’s like bird watching, in the sense you see a bird, you want to go and see it. There’s a golf course, you want to go and play it. That’s the aim of the golf course would be to attract people in to come and play the course because it is so special.’

Bringing people to Guernsey is a prime motivation for the project, he said.

‘The whole principle behind what we’re doing with the Grande Mare and I think in tourism generally is to give people a reason to come to the island. You know, people come to the island because it’s quaint. They come because of the history of the island. They come because the cliffs and cycling through the lanes and so on. It’s lovely to do.'

‘But if they’re going to come for sport, there’s got to be a real reason.’