Mercara Downs Golf Club

Mercara Downs is the hill-station course above Madikeri in Coorg, dating to around 1914 (per GolfPass) in a landscape the British likened to Scotland. The club's own site and GolfPass both describe 18 holes, par 70, around 5,500 yards — worth noting because many older write-ups describe Mercara Downs as a 9-hole course. For a visiting non-member the route is a phone call and a guest green fee: the club's own rate card lists GUEST ₹4,000, MEMBER GUEST ₹3,500 and CLUB MEMBERS ₹2,500, each with 12% tax shown as a separate line and therefore charged on top. The guest tier being priced above the member's-guest tier is the clearest published evidence that an unaccompanied visitor may play, though no reachable source states a walk-in or member-introduction policy outright, and a 2014 visitor review flatly calls it members-only; GolfPass classes it "Semi-Private". There is no online booking. Karnataka Golf Association lists it among its affiliated clubs at discounted rates. Two caveats about the prices: the rate card is undated, and the official site at mdgc.golf, while live and genuinely the club's, is not maintained — its footer still reads "© 2020", its newest content is a 2024 newsletter, and its dedicated rates page returns an error — so the prices above may not be current. The similarly-named mercaradowns.com is only a "coming soon" placeholder. Buggies and coaching are advertised by the club itself; the caddies and rental clubs come from GolfPass alone.

No date could be found for that ₹4,000 rate card — as of August 2026 it is still live, unchanged and undated on the club's site, and the only copies elsewhere sit on untrustworthy directory pages — so treat the fee as observed in August 2026 rather than guaranteed current. No opening hours are published by the club anywhere. One genuinely recent trace of life: TripAdvisor rates the club 4.0 of 5 across 38 reviews, the most recent from November 2025.