Belek, Türkiye

Cullinan Links Golf Club - Aspendos Course

Par 72 · 18 Holes · European Golf Design

Holes18

Par72

ArchitectEuropean Golf Design

Year1997

Course typeParkland

Length5463 m

FloodlitYes

Designer: European Golf Design

The tighter of Cullinan's two eighteens — shorter than Olympos on the card, and harder than it looks.

Why play here

Cullinan is the only course in Turkey with the sea on one side and a river on the other, and it plays like it: open, breezy and a good deal. It has been here since 1997, which makes it older than most of the courses.

It is the round you put in the middle of a hard week, or the one you book when half the group has not swung a club since last autumn.

How it plays

Olympos's twin on paper, but nothing like it on the course. Aspendos is the shorter of the two at 5,463 metres, and yet it carries the higher slope — 125 against 122 — which tells you where the difficulty has gone : not into length, but into the lines. The tee shots ask for a decision more often, and the ball that finishes on the wrong side of the fairway leaves an approach that Olympos would have forgiven. Play them in the same week and most groups find Aspendos the one they want a second go at. The 16th is the proof: 415 metres of par 4 on a course that measures 5,463 in total, and rated the third-hardest hole on the card.

What it asks for instead is wind. This close to open water the breeze arrives from a direction you do not get on the pine-lined courses inland, and it changes the club in your hand more often than the yardage does. Bermuda through the green means the ball sits up and runs on. A low handicapper will not find his limit here; everyone else finishes with a card worth showing.

This is one of Belek's originals. Hawtree of England laid out 27 holes here in 1997 — Tat Golf Club, as anyone who came to Belek in its first decade will remember — on the strip between the river and the Mediterranean. Marc Westenborg reworked it in 2009, and European Golf Design rebuilt it again in 2021, taking it to 36 holes across two eighteens and adding floodlights.

The one you’ll remember

The 16th, 415 metres, and a par 4 — which on a course of this length tells you most of what you need to know before you get there. You play it downhill from high ground, rare enough in Belek to be worth noticing, with the river down the entire right-hand

Know before you go

Shorter than Olympos and rated harder. If you are playing both, take Olympos first: Aspendos makes more sense once you have seen the ground.

Expect the breeze to build through the afternoon.

It is floodlit, so an evening nine is possible — confirm the hours and whether it is charged separately when you book.

Do not come here expecting Montgomerie or PGA Sultan. Cullinan is holiday golf done properly, not a championship examination.

When to play

March to May and late September to November are the two best and the peak season: warm days, firm turf and no heat to work through. June to August is playable, but the middle of the day is hot and early tee times are the only sensible ones.

December to February is also a good season in Belek — mild days, light rain on surfaces that drains fast, quiet fairways and the lowest prices of the year.

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18 Holes · Par 72
European Golf Design
Belek, Türkiye
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