PJ Heslin
| Sep 11, 2016
Although I am firmly lodged into my middle years, there are moments when I still feel like a teenager. In preparation for the first ever Amateur Ryder Cup between the USA and Europe in June 2016 at
Royal Mougins, I had that moment when I interviewed…
Riviera Reporter
| Jun 29, 2016
Team BRIT (British Racing Injured Troops) are hosting a friendly British expat weekend over July 16th and 17th, 2016, in the Marseille area, based around the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race at the Paul Ricard circuit in which Team BRIT are…
Joana Ruzgiene
| Mar 30, 2016
In 2011, the Association Sportive de Monaco Football Club (more commonly known as AS Monaco FC) was at the bottom of Ligue 2, and the team was facing the possibility of being pushed into third division. Apparently, at the time, Prince Albert II of…
Riviera Reporter
| Feb 29, 2016
Richard Luke Faul, known as “Chard”, grew up near Reading before moving to Cornwall with his family and becoming a student at Exeter University, where he studied to be a translator. “My studies were barely finished,” the 27-year-old tells the…
Riviera Reporter
| Jan 15, 2016
The
2016 World Rally Championship season begins in earnest next week with the historic
Monte-Carlo Rally - arguably the most famous, and certainly the oldest, event on the WRC circuit. The first rally of the year will be inaugurated next Thursday…
Pierre Obozinski
| Nov 15, 2015
Pickleball? It may sound like a funny name for a game, but it’s one of the fastest growing sports in the US and Canada with more than 200,000 players. The USA Pickleball Association saw its membership jump 84% in over two years. Pickleball started…
Jonathon Brown
| Oct 10, 2015
Quite apart from the respectable theory that cricket may have originated in northern France in the 13th century, cricket on the Côte d’Azur has an odd enough history; amidst all this summer’s razzmatazz surrounding the Promenade des Anglais (see “
Nancy Heslin
| Aug 31, 2015
Only the Swedes could invent a one-day sports event as mad as the Ötillö SwimRun World Championships. The SwimRun movement, started by Mats Skott and Michael in 2006, and has already been ranked by CNN as “one of the toughest endurance races in the…
Nick Kent
| Jan 18, 2015
A special bird of passage had dropped in to the Albatros Golf Performance Centre. David Leadbetter, the World’s No 1 golf coach, was paying his yearly visit to the remarkable teaching facility at Terre Blanche, the five-star golf resort near…
Nick Kent
| Nov 25, 2014
Perched on a mountain plateau high above Grasse, the Claux Amic golf club has one of the best sites of the Riviera courses. It winds its way through a superb natural backdrop of oak and pine forest, blazing here and there with yellow when the broom…
Nick Kent
| Oct 08, 2014
If the gods played golf, then the Monte-Carlo Golf Club would be their home course. As you thread your way up the hairpin bends of this particular Mount Olympus – in fact the 1000-metre Mont Agel behind Monaco – the anticipation mounts. A spanking…
Nick Kent
| Aug 16, 2014
The Brit making his Mark at Mougins. The Honours Board was the first aspect of Cannes-Mougins Golf Club to impress me on my first visit, invited some years ago by a fortunate and well-endowed friend. The vainqueurs of the European Open were an…
Nick Kent
| Jun 29, 2014
There are not many golf courses of which you can say one of the best things about them is the drive that gets you there. I think back to my days as a North London-dwelling golfer, struggling round the M25 to get to a 9:00 a.m. start time at The…
Mike Meade
| Jun 12, 2014
Most young boys have a wistful notion of where they want life to take them. A pilot, surgeon, explorer or sportsman are dreamy ambitions that usually fade in early adulthood when reality and the need to make a living kick in. Canadian Jakeson…
Nick Kent
| Apr 21, 2014
Bubba Watson, Thomas Bjorn, Matt Kuchar, Ian Woosnam. These big name, big game golfers and a hatful more have played at Terre Blanche and given the thumbs up to this elite golf resort. What turns them on about the Château, the course usually in play…
Florian Brehin & Scott Bell
| Apr 17, 2014
"Bro, you should have been here an hour ago” Most residents on the Côte d’Azur know the Mediterranean only for its warm and inviting summer conditions. But there is a more temperamental and wilder side of the Med that periodically visits the coast…
Nick Kent
| Mar 25, 2014
In what seems like the blink of an eye, truly great courses have sprung up in our neighbouring lands, becoming the best golfing destinations in their countries. Here we focus on some of these tempting destinations, but just remember that going in…
Nick Kent
| Jan 16, 2014
Riding high on the Ryder Cup. Pascal Grizot is a man with a mission – to change the way the French view the game of golf. He knows that at the moment the majority of people in the country view golf as a game solely pour les riches. “That attitude…
John Norsworthy, PGA
| Jan 04, 2014
Back to basics for best results on the greens. Like many aspects of golf, putting often flows better if you forget complicated instructions and just trust your natural instincts. Many of our golfing forefathers demonstrated this with great success.…
Nick Kent
| Dec 08, 2013
Da da da da, Da da da da da ... The vast vistas that greet the visitor to the Golf de St Endréol have the effect of producing strangled sounds from the throat of Riviera Golfer, as he attempts a rendition of the soundtrack to The Big Country. As the…
Nick Kent
| Nov 19, 2013
With the pips squeaking at a deafening volume, we’re all looking to save money these days. But before you decide there are cheaper hobbies than golf and put your clubs on eBay, the good news is that most of the golf clubs in our region have realised…
Nick Kent
| Nov 07, 2013
English-speaking François and his assistant pros, Isabelle Lambolez and Jonathan Faudin, have my favourite practice area in the region for their lessons. Constructed with oodles of charm in a hidden valley just across the road from the Riviera…
Nick Kent
| Oct 28, 2013
François Lamare, head pro at Riviera Barbossi, shares his form with Riviera Golfer. A European Challenge Tour player, François Lamare won the Danish Open and through that went on to play on the main tour for a spell. So it comes as a surprise that…
Nick Kent
| Oct 07, 2013
He's too modest to welcome the comparison, but Nuno Bastos is, like his fellow countryman José Mourinho, The Special One. This particular Portuguese is the new director of golf at Riviera de Barbossi, the Robert Trent Jones Sr course that lies…
Nick Kent
| Sep 27, 2013
Sex apart, it was the shortest thirty minutes of my life. At the end of my debutant scuba dive, the instructor indicated it was time to come to the surface, and it was with the greatest reluctance that I said goodbye to the delightful new world I…
Nick Kent
| Sep 04, 2013
The Compagnie d’Arc d’Antibes will be holding an open day on 14 September 2013 between 10am and 5pm, free trail sessions will be available throughout the day. “The first thing they’d do when the French captured an English archer was to chop off his…
Nick Kent
| Aug 22, 2013
You find yourself in a dark, enclosed space with a golf club in your hand. A huge screen fills the far wall. Hidden cameras record your every twitch. A computer is ready to help your teacher analyse your faults.Yes, it sounds like a nightmare. And…
Nick Kent
| Aug 14, 2013
They sound the same, but what is the difference between Golf Fee and Golfy, both “advantage” cards for golfers? Golfy offers two cards that can be used for green fee discounts at 130 courses in 8 countries: the Indigo (€39) gives you 25% off, the…
Nick Kent
| Aug 04, 2013
“We were inspired by the sense of freedom and joy you get from riding a sports car and we wanted to translate that experience to the golf car,” says Mr Anders Lynge, the creative brain behind the limited-edition Garia Mansory Currus. Golf round went…
Nick Kent
| Jul 27, 2013
Why are we waiting? There are two reasons why I passed up being a professional golfer. The first was my inability to hit a ball straight and long. The second was the prospect of spending most of my life waiting for the group ahead to clear the…
Nick Kent
| Jul 01, 2013
If you want to get a taste of what it would be like to compete in the first Ryder Cup to be held on French soil, then save up the sous and book yourself a tee time at Royal Mougins Golf Club. The American Robert von Hagge created both Royal Mougins…
Nick Kent
| Jun 07, 2013
Looking down from the tee of the short par 4 sixteenth towards the well-protected green, the Lachans mountain rising imposingly behind. When I hear the news in April that Chateau Taulane has opened for play after its winter rest, then I know spring…
Nick Kent
| May 17, 2013
One of four pros at the Old Course, Thomas Vander Clock shares with Riviera Golfer some interesting practice drills. Thomas Vander Clock was a junior at the club before going on to pro school then returning to the place where he first picked up a…
Nick Kent
| May 08, 2013
The character-packed face breaks into a smile and the eyes shine with pride. “This is the soul of the Old Course,” says Jean-Pierre Martin, pointing at a centuries-old umbrella pine that seems to thrust through the very walls of the venerable…
Molly Brown
| Mar 12, 2013
Monaco is best known for the legendary Monte Carlo Rally and unique Formula 1 car racing event, the Monaco Grand Prix, but it has been at the forefront of tennis since the 1880s when this new English outdoor pastime became popular with the many…
Patrick Middleton
| Feb 21, 2013
One of our readers – a fan of the FT’s Lucy Kellaway, the Pink ’Un’s excellent columnist – admitted that she’d got it wrong in a knocking piece about the Olympics published on the eve of the Games: “The biggest pile of hogwash I’ve ever written.”…
Patrick Middleton
| Feb 16, 2013
That's how David Beckham must be viewed by some circles in Monaco. At one point last year the story went round that he might be joining the Principality's soccer club ASM. As usual with anything relating to Grimaldiland, there were contradictory…
Nick Kent
| Feb 05, 2013
Every year sees two bitterly-fought contests for the Ringpress Cup, myself and my former business partner John the only contenders.These normally take place in Portugal, with John flying in from London and me from Nice. This year, however, we…
Riviera Reporter
| Jan 28, 2013
This isn’t really rugby country in the same way as the southwest of France. Even in Toulon you won’t find quite the passionate commitment they have in Perpignan. And yet the oval ball has its followers here, including many English-speaking expats.…
Nancy Heslin
| Dec 15, 2012
Ironman 70.3 in Aix on September 23rd 2012 was my first triathlon covering a 1.9km swim, 90km bike and half-marathon (21km). I’m not sure why I didn’t start off with an Olympic distance triathlon (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run) and build my way up…
Nancy Heslin
| Sep 08, 2012
The excellent 1998 German film in our title opens with Lola receiving a phone call warning that she has twenty minutes to come up with 100,000 deutschmarks (about €50,000) to save her boyfriend’s life. With no time to spare, she bolts out of her…
Nancy Heslin
| May 27, 2012
No matter how much I want to swim in the sea year round, I just can’t brave the 11°C temperature like the old-timers: I observe from a distance, bundled up complete with a scarf and gloves, sipping on a coffee and still get goose bumps watching them…
P J Heslin
| Feb 07, 2012
When I first moved here, one of the at-home-comforts that I was searching for was a proper boxing gym. Since the Côte d’Azur isn’t exactly synonymous with martial sports I thought I’d be lucky to find a room with a heavy bag and some free weights. A…