The editors of the prestigious Golf & Roll magazine, which is produced in cooperation with golfers, visited golf courses on the Costa del Sol.
The result is a very interesting comparative analysis of a few selected golf courses, along with a description, impressions of the game and also a listing of prices.
There are more than 100 golf courses available in Andalusia. We invite you to take a deeper look at a few selected ones.
New Links Course – La Hacienda Links Golf Resort
– Par: 72
– Architect: Peter Alliss and Clive Clark (redesigned in 2021 by Kurtis Bowman)
– Year founded: 1992
– Length: from yellows: 5,514 m / from red: 4 634 m
– Green Fee: 230 euros with buggy
La Hacienda is the good old and beloved Alcaides, which was lucky enough to find a very rich investor. A company called Millenium Hospitality Real Estate, which is in the business of buying up tourist “middling” properties and turning them into luxury goods, bought what they could in the region in 2019 and got to work hard.
They’ve already managed to convert both golf courses, started construction of a luxury Fairmont hotel, even more luxury residences and a new clubhouse. The inauguration is scheduled for 2024. It will be beautiful, opulent and probably expensive.
In 2023, the Links course, redesigned by American architect Kurtis Bowman, was named “Best Golf Course in Spain.” It is Andalusia’s most famous, most beautiful and most heavily trafficked golf course.
What to compare this course to? To make it easier, we should answer the question of what a links course is.
Links in Andalusian is a treeless course stretching for miles along the coast. The first nine march toward Gibraltar, the second retreats. Isn’t it boring?
However, these are the most beautiful five hours of boredom one can experience. There is no more beautifully situated golf course in the south of Spain. In theory, it is a wide, easy course. However, it turns out that wide does not mean easy. The course slopes toward the sea and you have to scramble quite a bit to avoid ending up in the bushes. The greens are undulating, fast, and know no mercy when hitting downhill.
As a consolation, it is a course belonging to the “table cover yourself” group. You lose the ball, go into the bushes and bring up five.
During the game, Marshall distributes water and chocolate bars to the tired and thirsty golfers. Those who don’t like to eat on the run can rest after the first nine at the halfway house. Take a ten-minute break for a cold beer or shrimp in tempura. And to make sure the players don’t get ahead of themselves, the break is mandatory. Terrace view of the golf course, Africa and Gibraltar included!
Heathland Course – La Hacienda Links Golf Resort
– Par: 73
– Architect: Dave Thomas
– Year founded: 1992
– Length: from yellows: 6,099 m / from red: 5 302 m
– Green Fee: 110 euros with buggy
New Links Course is a Maybach – the essence of perfection, Heathland is a Jeep Wrangler, a bit disheveled, battered, but still loved.
Heathland, for that is the name of the course in Slavic, is a field full of surprises. On the one hand, its width allows, in theory, to play with momentum to the right and left (I, however, sometimes didn’t fit in), on the other hand, it has unbelievable level differences that allow you to send the ball to Meronian distances.
Heathland has relied on nature. One doesn’t feel human interference here. Nature invented a hole, there is a hole. It didn’t grow trees, it just doesn’t have them. It’s such a link in the mountain environment. A great complement to the coastal eighteen.
Despite the fact that Heathland is considered a poor relative of the iconic Links, you won’t be disappointed beating the moors. By the way, even though it was September, the time of heather bloom, I didn’t encounter a single bush of this type.
La Hacienda Links Golf Resort offers golf packages that start at €1,400 and include: 7 nights Bed & Breaksfast, 2 green fees at Heathland Golf Course, 1 green fee at New Links Golf Course.
Marbella Golf Course
– Par: 72
– Architect: Robert Trent Jones Sr.
– Year of establishment: 1994
– Length: from yellows: 5,551 m / from red: 4 687 m
– Green Fee: 113 euros with buggy
A field fifteen minutes’ drive from the city center could not augur an extraordinary experience. So we drove from Caddie out of obligation to learn about the field, which has the magic word Marbella in its name. You write about Andalusia, it must be about Marbella.
It turned out that we were wrong. Marbella Golf Course is a true golfing beauty! The first nine, the “front nine” as the Spaniards say, is overly difficult, mountainous, uneven and waiting. You wait and wait for the players in front of you to disentangle themselves from their golfing predicaments. Unfortunately, the “three-minute” rule for finding the ball doesn’t apply, neither does efficient play on the greens. The lousier the golfer, the more he crouches, sets, measures, goes around and makes ten test strokes. Of course, the ball doesn’t fall in anyway, and the golfer bends over backwards, groans and is surprised that it didn’t fall in. And you wait and want to kill it, and you can’t, so you wait.
Why is golf taken so seriously? Do I do ten trial turns of the pedals before riding a bike? No, I sit down and ride. Another problem is the “obligation” to finish the hole, even though you’re after sixteen strokes.
Back to the field. As we have already established, the first nine is fantastic. The second, as it turned out, is also overblowing, but differently, more easily overblowing. She flattens out, stretches widely and begins to forgive missed tee shots. She mellows out and invites another date.
Beautiful is this field and the views are beautiful, and the sea in the distance with crowds of beachgoers who do not enter the water, because the temperature in the depths is “on three.” That is, we hold hands and “on three” plunge, of course, as long as we are heroes.
Let’s play Marbella, because beautiful and for Andalusian conditions at a reasonable price.
Torrequebrada Golf Course (G&R award)
– Par: 72
– Architect: Jose “Pepe” Gancedo
– Year founded: 1976
– Length: from yellows: 5,766 m / from red: 4 897 m
– Green Fee: 109 / buggy: 40 euros.
I would compare this course to a mistress – no, mistress does not connote well. As a mistress there must be a wife in the background, and yet no golfer will cheat on his wife. At most, he won’t count a stroke and put it on his scorecard.
To a fiancée I would compare. Such an early one, who tries beyond measure. And she makes up beautifully, dresses up, talks nicely. Such is the Torrequebrada golf course.
Located inland with a distant view of the Andalusian sea and a closer view of the mountains, also Andalusian. Green, manicured like our exemplary bride after leaving the beauty salon, decorated with smaller and larger flowers. Pits so cleverly designed that the whole eighteen beautiful. I think the word “beautiful” should be used It’s not for nothing that course designer Jose Gancado has been called the “Picasso of golf.”
It’s kind of Thailand in miniature. One hundred species of trees, so they write, line the fairways, bodies of water populated with turtles. A subtropical jungle in Europe.
Turtle hole, a par three – the most beautiful. Water all the way to the end (150 meters in the flight), a three-tiered green and a jungle in the back. To top it all off, I still had to hit hungry, as the turtles ate my second breakfast.
For higher handicappers, the field can be slightly stressful, but there is a way around it – don’t take the game too seriously and prepare a few spare balls.
I agreed with Ana Nyhblat, the head of marketing, that if I liked the field, she would take me to the Solheim Cup final, and if not, she wouldn’t. Well, how was I not supposed to like it?
If you happen to land in Andalusia, be sure to play this amazing course. You will experience golf ascension. I flew to hell when, hitting from the tee of hole eighteen, I landed on the tee of hole seventeen. Good thing, though, that I didn’t have to repeat that seventeenth.
La Zagaleta New Course
– Par: 72
– Architect: Gaunt & Marnoch
– Year founded: 2005
– Length: from yellow: 5,123 m / from red:4 351 m
– Green Fee: 225 from the buggy (if you manage to get the right of entry)
Before we get to the description of the field, I would like to write what the La Zagaleta project really is.
La Zagaleta is the most luxurious, gated, 900-acre estate in Europe, created in 1991.Hidden among green mountain gorges, not far from the Andalusian coast, it is a true paradise. Unfortunately, a paradise for a few, and not at all for the sinless ones.
The originator and now honorary chairman of the company, Enrique Pérez Flores, as told by media communications director Sergio Azcona, agreed to develop the area with 420 houses.That’s a lot – it was supposed to be 3,000. Of course, after that decision, real estate prices skyrocketed and now a paradise cell costs between 3 and 34 million euros.What’s in return? Views of the Mediterranean, Africa, Gibraltar, lakes, two 18-hole golf courses and no neighbor nearby.
To make sure that the owner of a 3,000- to 10,000-square-foot house doesn’t get too bored, an equestrian center has been built with 23 stables where residents can breed their horses, as well as tennis courts and a helipad.
In addition, residents are pampered by a 120-member team of multilingual professionals offering 24-hour personalized service.
I won’t write about the Old Course because I haven’t played there and no one will play there. It has been bought out by members and thus the “tee times” feature does not exist there.If the Old Course has more than ten players in a day, a complaint can be made.
The second, also residents-only, resort course had its inauguration in 2005 and was immediately loved by fallow deer. However, they are well-behaved enough not to eat the balls or interfere with the game.
Until 2021, the field was reserved for residents only; for the past 2 years it has opened its doors for 3 hours a day with a limited number of days a year.
The field is extremely difficult, crazy and there is no earthly way to play it. It’s impossible to play short, tactically to avoid losing the ball, because the location of the tee boxes forces you to play with a driver. Without it, it’s impossible to penetrate the fairway through natural obstacles, which are usually ravines wide to the horizon and deep to the gates of hell.Plus, they narrow as if they don’t have the money to water them, and they do, because such groomed golf courses are rare. The fairway is a green cushion of all-encompassing smoothness.And then the green begins and three putts are a dream….
On this course you can love the balls with a mad love, unfortunately unrequited.They leave quickly and without notice.
I’ve been traveling the golf world for a good couple of years now, I’ve played hundreds of courses, I won’t count, but on such a cosmically beautiful and difficult one I haven’t played yet. I thought Salobre New, Anfi Tauro, or Las Ramblas were the most difficult of the difficult. Nothing could be further from the truth.
La Zagaleta New gets the title of The most dificult golf course of the world, of course among the courses I have met.
I thought I had touched heaven, and found myself in hell, losing half of the balls I brought to Spain. However, I am willing to sacrifice twice as many of them to be able to play this course again.
Dear dreaded golfers, I have good news for you – it is impossible to play this course. Unless you are as determined as Prime Minister Morawiecki in seeking a parliamentary majority.
Valle Romano
– Par: 71
– Architect: Cabel B. Robinson
– Year founded: 2010
– Length: of yellow: 5,868 m / from red: 4 905 m
– Green Fee: 100 euros with buggy
The three courses catering to golfers who have chosen the beautiful seaside town of Estepona as a place to stay are Azata, Valle Romano and Estepona. We, for the tasting, chose the most pleasant-sounding Valle Romano.
The problem for all evaluators, and in fact the problem for the one being evaluated, is the order in which they appear. Unfortunately, Valle Romano shared its charms after the cosmic La Zagaleta field.
I joined the game after returning from a celestial trip, and for the first nine of the new field I found it difficult to adjust to playing on the earthly pad. The field appeared to me as mediocre, simple and underpowered.
However, the second nine began to make up for it quickly. Seaside views pleasing to the eye appeared, and the nine began to bite with the difficulty of the next holes. It got interesting and it was like that until the end.
A versatile course. Giving relaxed and spirited play, and at the same time, especially on the second nine, appropriating a few balls. Maybe not first league, but a nice course.
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