Golf travel
Golf in Greece
Greece has one golf destination that matters, and it is a serious one: Costa Navarino in Messinia, where four courses by four different architects — Langer, Robert Trent Jones Jr. and two by José María Olazábal — sit within thirteen kilometres of each other and share a single green fee.
Best March–June and September–November; July and August average 32 degrees Celsius, so play early or late. Winter golf runs, but western European flights to Kalamata stop from about November to March
Greek golf barely existed as a travel proposition until 2010, and it more or less still comes down to one address. Costa Navarino, in Messinia in the south-west Peloponnese, has four 18-hole courses by four separate commissions, all inside a thirteen-kilometre triangle: Bernhard Langer's Dunes Course, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. layout along the Bay of Navarino, and two hilltop courses by José María Olazábal — one of which is the world's first International Olympic Academy Golf Course.
What makes it work as a trip rather than a curiosity is the resort's own structure: one green fee is valid on all four courses on selected days, and a complimentary shuttle runs between them. What makes it a planning job is everything around it — Kalamata airport is seasonal, high summer is genuinely too hot, and one of the four course areas has no hotel at all. Our Greece guide covers Costa Navarino in full: every course, the access rules, the verified winter rate card, and the flight problem nobody writes about.