La Quinta Golf & Country Club, in the heart of the so-called Costa del Golf, designated as the venue for the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open de España Femenino 2018, is ready to generate the greatest of spectacles, an eminently technical course that will test the skills of the many golf stars who will opt for the title, with the Malaga-born Azahara Muñoz at the head, who aspires to achieve her third consecutive victory. The Women’s European Tour tournament will be played between November 22 and 25. The Malaga-born player will try to score a hat-trick after her victories in 2016 in Aloha (it was the first by a Spaniard in the history of the tournament) and last year at the RCG Guadalmina.
“They are going to find a very technical course, where the big hitters will have little advantage because the most important thing is to manage each stroke very well, to establish a strategy of where you want to take the ball at all times, because otherwise they are going to find many difficulties,” analyzes Manuel Piñero, one of the great legends of Spanish golf and, among other things, designer of La Quinta Golf & Country Club.
“It is essential to place the ball very well from the tee and be very clear about where to leave it afterwards to face the greens, which are generally small and with a lot of movement”, warns Manuel Piñero, a maximum concentration from which, perhaps, the first hole “maybe the easiest, a short par 4, but from there on…”.
From there comes a long, difficult par 3, with water, well protected, with a very treacherous green, in the opinion of Manuel Piñero “the emblematic par 3 of the course, which gives way to a course where well distributed obstacles alternate, bunkers, trees that are uncomfortable in certain trajectories, long and narrow fairways, greens with several platforms… a little bit of everything”.
There are also holes with steep climbs, others downhill, long holes, such as the par 5 of hole 8 – “where they will not reach the green in two shots”-, greens with up to three pianos, obstacles and more obstacles that are reproduced in the second round, a course of great beauty that concludes with a hole that can be decisive in a tight finish, something that certainly characterizes the outcome of the Open de España Femeninos in recent years.
“The 18th hole lends itself to make eagle, but at the same time it can generate bogeys. The key is to reach the green well, which is small, protected by frontal water that forces you to be very precise so as not to go too far and run into serious difficulties. There will be a spectacle, of course there will be a spectacle”, Manuel Piñero assures categorically, aware that the conditions the players will find will be excellent.
C + B course as a guarantee of fun and new bunkers
La Quinta Golf & Country Club is a golfing complex of reference that has 27 holes, which allows to have different courses depending on the level of the tournament. For the celebration of the Andalucía Costa del Sol Open de España Femenino, it has been decided to join the C + B courses, a formula that guarantees fun.
José Luis Gómez, director of La Quinta, highlights “the high investment made to renovate all the bunkers of the course using the ‘Better Billy Bunker’ system, a cutting-edge American technology that allows the bunkers to offer the best conditions even in extreme situations. This allows us to play the tournament with full guarantees, although it will normally be played in mild weather conditions”.
In addition, those responsible for the course are carrying out manicuring work on the course related to the landscape, selective pruning of trees, reseeding of tees “without forgetting the greens, one of the hallmarks of the Quinta, with a speed and consistency that will allow the golfers to play in optimal conditions. Here, of course, there are no holes to relax, so the best one will surely win”, concludes José Luis Gómez.
Presence of the best players of the European Women’s Tour
This will be the fifth time in history that the Costa del Sol hosts the celebration of a Women’s Spanish Open after those played at Flamingos in 2010, at La Quinta in 2011, at Aloha Golf in 2016 and at RCG Guadalmina in 2017. In the first of these cases the triumph corresponded to the legendary Laura Davies, while in the second the trophy ended up in the hands of her English compatriot Melissa Reid. Special mention for the outcomes of this tournament in the last two years, where Azahara Muñoz became in 2016 the first Spaniard to achieve victory, a success subsequently ratified in 2017.
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