Madras Gymkhana Club Golf Annexe

Overview: Inside Chennai's Guindy Race Course, the Madras Gymkhana Club Golf Annexe is an unusual urban golf setting: the fairways sit within the wider horse-racing precinct rather than in a conventional resort landscape. A published IPI course profile describes it as an 18-hole, links-style layout measuring 6,690 yards at par 72. That published figure gives visitors a useful sense of scale, while the course's real character comes from its long association with the city, its open setting and the challenge of playing golf in a place where racing and golf share the same historic ground.

History: Madras Gymkhana Club dates its foundation to April 1884. The current legal record for the Guindy golf course traces the club's golf identity to 1887 and confirms that the Gymkhana has maintained the course. The early arrangement was built in stages: seven holes were first associated with Island Grounds and four with Guindy, before the course was expanded to a full 18-hole layout around the turn of the twentieth century. That layered history explains why this is as much a Chennai institution as it is a round of golf.

Did You Know? The course is one of the rare golf venues in which a horse-race circuit is part of the immediate setting. Its location makes the name “Golf Annexe” quite literal: the golf course is a long-established part of the Gymkhana's wider sporting estate, not a stand-alone destination course created outside the city.