Noria Golf Club

Overview: Noria Golf Club is an 18-hole course in Marrakech built around a sequence of distinct landscape zones. Steve Forrest of Hills&Forrest shaped the layout so that wooded and flowering sections give way to a water-focused middle, before the holes move into a more open desert character. The Moroccan Golf Federation and national tourism material list a par of 73 and 6,489 metres, approximately 7,091 yards. Its identity comes as much from the transitions as from the score: olive groves, lavender, water and dry ground create different visual and strategic demands within one round, with the Atlas providing a distant frame.

History: Noria opened in 2014 as one of the newer Marrakech courses and was conceived to offer a more original alternative to the city’s established parkland layouts. The design uses the traditional Moroccan noria, or water wheel, as part of the club’s visual language. Forrest’s plan divides the property into three six-hole themes, wooded and floral, aquatic and desert, while retaining a continuous 18-hole test. The result is a course whose story is tied to landscape composition as much as to conventional hazards.

Did You Know? A rectangular basin and a traditional water-wheel structure are central visual references at Noria. The water feature helps divide the themes of the course and gives the later holes a geometric backdrop, an unusual architectural signature in a golf setting dominated elsewhere by palms and broad resort lawns.