Costa Navarino - The Dunes Course

Few golf destinations in Europe have arrived with as much ambition as Costa Navarino, the luxury resort complex that transformed a stretch of the southwestern Peloponnese into one of the continent's most talked-about golf addresses. The Dunes Course, designed by Kyle Phillips and opened in 2010, was part of the original wave of development here, joining The Bay Course as the resort's founding layouts. Phillips brought a naturalistic sensibility to the project, working with the land's existing contours and the native Mediterranean vegetation — wild sage, olive groves, and cistus — to create something that feels rooted rather than imposed.

The southwestern Peloponnese is not a region most European golfers think of first, but the logic of it becomes clear once you're there. Messinia's climate is among the mildest in Greece, the light has a particular warmth, and the landscape rolls toward the Ionian Sea with a drama that rewards courses designed to use it.

The Dunes Course plays along and through coastal duneland terrain, with Phillips deploying his characteristic bold bunkering and firm, fast conditions that reward ground-game thinking over aerial assault.