Halfway between Playa del Carmen and the beautiful city of Tulum, cosmopolitan and bohemian at the same time, facing the second largest barrier reef in the world, the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve, is the great Bahia Principe Riviera Maya resort, where the winners of the Circuit and their companions will stay. With four splendid five-star hotels, two of them luxury, a golf course (Riviera Maya Golf Club) and an impressive residential area of hundreds of hectares, it is one of the reference resorts in the Mexican Caribbean.
Some twelve years ago, between 2006 and 2007, Jaime Sitjar, a senior executive of Grupo Piñero, the resort’s owner, contacted Robert Trent Jones junior’s team to visit the site and study the possibility of building a golf course there. The plan presented to him, an 18-hole course and a nine-hole course, reflected exactly what Jaime had imagined: two magnificent courses fully integrated into the jungle of mangroves and cenotes.
“At this course,” says Vanessa Vignali, corporate director of Bahia Principe Golf, “the first thing that leaves you open-mouthed is the natural environment. Even though you’re playing golf, in the end it’s almost the least of it… you’re so surrounded by incredible birds of all colors, iguanas that cross your path, coatis and serequés, etc., that you almost forget about the game. At least it happens to me, which in a way is a small problem of concentration… Then there are those cenotes in the middle of a hole that impress”.
“The design,” he continues, “is spectacular. he continues, “is spectacular. Here you have to place the ball constantly because you either have a cenote or islets in the middle of a hole or the mangroves that delimit the fairways. And the rough is not very high. The greens are also complicated. I would say that it is the most demanding course in this area. It is also long, with some holes that are certainly difficult.
“Among the holes I would highlight is the 4th, which I like very much, with the Kang Ha River meandering through it. It’s a par 5 where you can try, taking a risk, to get from two to green, but it’s complicated. Then, of course, hole 6, with a cenote in the middle of the fairway that you almost don’t see until you get to it. The drive has a very narrow drop, with a wall on the right…. You have to put the ball in place to get a shot at the green. I also really like the 14th, a spectacular par 5, and, of course, the 15th, one of the most beautiful par 3s I know. It compensates the almost ‘impossible hole’ character with the beauty of the design. Getting out of here with a double bogey almost matters less than the pleasure of play this hole”.
“I am sure,” concludes Vanessa Vignali, “that the winners, and their companions, of the Andalucía Golf Challenge Destination Riviera Maya Golf Club Bahia Principe will lack time in Riviera Maya, there are so many options that sometimes it is not easy to decide on one or the other. What is certain is that our course will not leave them indifferent.
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A TRULY ECOLOGICAL FIELD
One of the defining characteristics of Riviera Maya Golf Club is its absolute respect for the environment. “We do,” assures Victor Hernandez Tenorio, its greenkeeper, “a totally sustainable management (maintenance) management that differentiates us, I believe, from any other golf course and makes us pioneers and forerunners in this aspect.”
“Commonly,” he continues, “golf courses use integrated pest management, but we established the concept of sustainable pest management five years ago, using 100 percent live products that help us to armor the soil profile on fairways and greens.”
-You fight pests with other “bugs” and organisms…
-For simplicity’s sake, that’s right: good versus bad. The strains of bacteria and diseases that do the most damage to a field are inoculated with other beneficial fungi that eat them up. We try to bring zero chemicals to the turf. We only use live products, strains of bacteria or fungi that eliminate those that cause diseases. We also use this system with insects, etc…. The results in these five have been spectacular.
To perfect and adapt these sustainable treatments, Riviera Maya Golf Club has entered into a collaboration agreement with the Universidad Autónoma de Chipingo (Texcoco), which researches and teaches agronomic and environmental sciences, mainly focused on rural development.
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FERNANDO PADRÓN: “It is a spectacular course with a fantastic design”.
After four years as Director of Operations at Real Club Valderrama and previously managing the Spanish golf courses Villamayor and Los Ángeles de San Rafael, Fernando Padrón has just joined Riviera Maya Golf Club as Director.
He undertakes this new professional challenge “with great enthusiasm and with ideas that I believe can contribute to further enhance the great image and reception that this field has”.
This is how he sums up what a golfer will find when he plays Riviera Maya Golf Club: “A fantastic design by Robert Trent Jones junior made over cenotes, very spectacular and at the same time very commercial, with wide fairways, very flat, very beautiful, with many possibilities, with very varied holes, very fun for any handicap level”.
Regarding the resort where the course is located, Padrón says it is “impressive, you are amazed, it is spectacular for its size, its location and the quality of its four hotels and all the facilities, all with exceptional service”. And he adds that this resort shows why Bahia Principe is one of the world’s leading experts in hotel management.
He emphasizes that the resort’s location “is unbeatable” because it is only twenty minutes away from Tulum and half an hour from Playa del Carmen, and highlights the beauty of Acumal beach, where the resort is located, which is also very famous because turtles lay their eggs there. Another attraction in the area is the nearby island of Cozumel.
The main markets for the golf course -and for the resort in general- are the United States and Canada, “although we are obviously going to work on new markets as well to continue making it known and promoting it”.
Regarding the attractions that the Riviera Maya has for the Spanish market, Padrón says there are “many: the culture so closely linked to the Spanish, the language, the climate, the beaches, the landscapes, the friendliness of the Mexicans, who make you feel at home, the archaeological heritage and a resort like ours, with an extraordinary golf course”.
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