Golf & Country Club Dolina Kardinala

Overview: Golf & Country Club Dolina Kardinala is an 18-hole, par-71 layout at Mirkopolje near Krašić, southwest of Zagreb. Howard Swan designed the course through a broad rural valley, using linked lakes, ponds and natural vegetation to shape the holes. The most distinctive water features are at the 8th and 17th, whose greens sit within one large connected feature with cascades and stepping stones. Contemporary reports described a 6,200-metre course with a nine-hole family layout, practice facilities and a planned resort complex. The historic 18-hole routing is now best understood as a former course, because current sources describe the property as closed and not reopened.

History: Dolina Kardinala was developed in the late 1990s as Croatia's first modern 18-hole golf project. A contemporary report announced the course opening in July 1999 and credited Howard Swan with the design, while Croatian historical sources also cite 1998 for an earlier phase of the development. The course hosted Croatian Open events and professional competitions during its active period. Later ownership and financial difficulties interrupted the project, and reporting published in 2021 stated that the last golf had been played around 2011. Top100GolfCourses continues to identify the exact Mirkopolje course as closed, with no dependable evidence of a subsequent reopening.

Did You Know? Dolina Kardinala means “Valley of the Cardinals,” a reference to the Krašić area and its association with Croatian church history. When the course opened, Howard Swan described its naturalistic design, and the project reported that tortoises had returned to newly created aquatic habitats. The linked water feature around the 8th and 17th greens remains the clearest expression of that original landscape idea.