The president of the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation, Ángel de la Riva, has been named Honorary Member of the Real Club de Campo de Málaga (RCCM). The appointment was approved by the Extraordinary General Assembly of Members at the proposal of the Board of Directors of the club “in recognition of his long, fruitful and incomparable career, both as a player and as a director, in the world of Andalusian and Spanish golf”. On January 28th, during the closing dinner and awards ceremony of the LXXII Iberia Cup, the president of the RCCM, Angel Muñoz Enriquez de la Orden, after making a long list of the triumphs and merits of Angel de la Riva, presented him with a commemorative plaque as Honorary Member of the RCCM. The ceremony was attended by the vice president of the Provincial Council of Malaga, Francisco Javier Oblaré Torres, the co-president of Cajamar, Luis de la Maza Garrido, the president of the Club de Gol Guadalhorce, Javier Alonso Martínez, relatives of Ángel de la Riva, the Board of Directors of the RCCM, members of the various teams participating in the Iberia Cup and many members of the RCCM.
To speak of Ángel de la Riva is to speak of Andalusian golf and of one of the people who has fought and done the most for this sport in the south of Spain. This Malaga-born man of fine countenance and slender figure, reminiscent of the ingenious nobleman Don Quixote, came into the world in 1939 and has been linked to the Andalusian Golf Federation -now Royal- for forty years. A lover of classical music and opera, Ángel de la Riva is also passionate about his homeland, which he only left for a few years to study, first in Madrid and then in Switzerland, where he studied architecture. In 1960 his brother Francisco died and Ángel’s life took a radical turn. In 1962 he returned to Malaga and began to work in the family business, almost all of which were agricultural in nature. The following year he got married. He has two daughters and a son, whom he tried to inoculate with the golf virus, although without much success. They know how to play, but he recognizes that it is his sons-in-law who are more subjugated by this sport.
His relationship with golf began in 1952. He was 12 years old. And he played at the then called Club de Campo de Málaga (today Parador Málaga del Golf). “My cousin Pepe, Pedro Casado and I would come to play with our parents,” recalls Ángel. His father used to play pigeon in a club located next to the golf course, and his friends played golf. There was a caddie school and the three friends were taught by the club’s teacher, Julio Casaña, and that’s where their golfing life began. When he went to the capital of Spain to study, Ángel played at the Club de Campo de Madrid. Later, during his stay in Switzerland, he was unable to practice a single shot. When he returned in 1962, he reconnected with golf and was appointed vice-secretary of the Malaga Country Club, where the Marquis of Nájera was president. His uncle Francisco Gómez Raggio was the secretary. In 1963 he was appointed president of the Competition Committee of that club, and later he also held the same position at the Malaga club El Candado, which was born in 1966.
At the end of 1968 he was elected president of the Eastern Andalusian Golf Federation. In those days, when an area or delegation had a minimum of four 18-hole courses it constituted a federation. In 1968 there were Guadalmina, Club de Campo de Málaga, Sotogrande and Atalaya. The representatives of the courses met with Angel Najera, who was the provincial delegate of Eastern Andalusia, and appointed him as the first president of the Federation of Eastern Andalusia. But due to his advanced age he was not fit to hold the position, and so they appointed De la Riva. He was president until 1988, when he left the Federation to create a golf club, which was his dream. He managed to have the Guadalhorce and when he had been president for eight years, he left to run again for the presidency of the Federation in 1996. In 1979, when he was president, the two Andalusian Federations, the Eastern and the Western, were united. Rafael Burgos was president for eight years. Ángel returned in 1996, and has been so until now.
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