Tunisia is the most northern country in Africa, flanked by Algeria to the west, Libya to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east of a sandy coastline that extends to over 700 miles. Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Ottomans and French have all ruled this area of North Africa during the past few thousand years with the Tunisian people in control of their own destiny only since independence in 1956.

Tunisia lies very close to the European continent but many believe it has been slow to market the golf facilities it can offer a large number of potential visitors. There’s plenty of golfers in a large catchment area to the north just waiting to be tempted to travel a relatively short way to play here, especially when the sun shines on this part of the world nearly all the year round.

Although the first Tunisian golf course was established at Carthage in the 1920s, it was another fifty years before others followed and American architect Ron Fream led the way, designing exciting layouts from Tabarka in the north along the coastline to Monastir. Ron Fream on Tunisian Golf is an exclusive quote he sent us from his home in Malaysia on his pioneering work in this country.

Following the Tunisian revolution in 2011 and the overthrow of President Ben Ali, Tunisia had the chance to further develop its tourism sector and perhaps even increase the number of courses available to incoming golfers. Alas, the 2015 terrorist attacks on tourists in Tunis and Sousse set the country back quite a bit in terms of attracting foreign visitors but, within three years, the arrival numbers remarkably rebounded to where they had been before the times of turmoil.

In 2019, it was announced that the mixed-use Tunis Sports City development in the Lac de Tunis district of the capital would finally go ahead, after spending a very long time on the planning board. Located on a 640-acre site, this US$5 billion project is a partnership between the UAE’s Bukhatir Group and the Tunisian government, with a Peter Harradine-designed golf course as one of its main sporting elements.

We updated Tunisia's rankings in June 2020. Full details are here: Top 10 Golf Courses of Tunisia 2020