Golf and haute cuisine merge in the kitchens and renowned courses of Andalusia. Chefs passionate about golf and golfers fond of good food regularly share a game and a table in the south of Spain.
“Golf and cooking have many things in common. Small details like a bad arm movement in golf and two more minutes in the oven in the kitchen can radically change the golf or the dish”, explains chef Dani García, recent discoverer of the peace that comes with practicing golf “no matter how many strokes you make”.
The chef from Malaga, with restaurants all over the world, has a special memory of attending the 2022 Masters, the year of the victory of the Spaniard Jon Rahm.
“What I experienced at Augusta National far surpasses anything you can imagine,” said Garcia before sitting down to lunch at Real Club de Golf Sotogrande during the final day of the Estrella Damm N.A. Masters de Andalucia on the DP World Tour.
“We are surely in the golf club where the best food in Europe and it is not easy to find a chef as good as Mikel Landa,” adds Dani Garcia about the director of hospitality at the Real Club de Golf Sotogrande.
“In 1999, the director and president of the club came north looking for a head chef. A year and six months of trial turned into 25 years at the club, married and with children,” says the chef from Zumárraga, who has developed most of his gastronomic career in Sotogrande after spending time in France and “touching a few Michelin stars.”
Although he has played very little, Mikel Landa is a great fan of golf and especially of the professional golfers who have enjoyed his food, from the American Matt Kuchar to the young David Puig, whom he accompanied during the last British Open.
“We have a very good relationship and he made a delicious tortilla de patatas every morning. It was a great experience,” recalls Puig, who finished twelfth at the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters.
Like Landa, Belgian-born Andalusian Albert Croquet, owner of Asador El Gaucho in Sotogrande, has served and fed the world’s best golfers at his restaurant since 1985.
When Tiger Woods won the American Express World Golf Championship at Real Club de Golf de Valderrama in 1999, after an epic playoff against Andalusian Miguel Angel Jimenez, he celebrated at El Gaucho.
“When I took his order, he asked me for a sirloin for a starter and a sirloin for a main course,” he recalls of the American star’s visit. “As a golfer I’m not very good, although I like to compete rather than play among friends,” Croquet points out.
The junior golf competitions and school at La Cañada Club de Golf de Sotogrande propelled Lucía Martín and Mar García, the daughters of the partners of El Trasmallo de Agustino Restaurant, to high-level college golf in the United States.
“We all play golf and we love golf,” says Antonio Martín about his family and the Trasmallo staff, uniformed in golf pants and polo shirts. “We’ve had the restaurant since 2006 and we always have professional players and the occasional celebrity come to see us,” he adds.
Antonio Martín and his partner, Armando García, have lived through the heyday of major golf events in the area, such as the 1997 Ryder Cup at Real Club Valderrama and the 2023 Solheim Cup at Finca Cortesín, where the promising young chef Luis Olarra, the chef of the REI Restaurant, fed both Europeans and Americans.
In the 2024 Solheim Cup at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, United States, another famous Spanish chef married to a woman from Algeciras and regular visitor to the golf courses of Andalusia, Chef José Andrés, shared the celebrations on the tee with former President Obama and golfer Carlota Ciganda.
The Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters, a DP World Tour tournament valid for the Race to Dubai that is held thanks to the essential collaboration of the Real Club de Golf Sotogrande, is sponsored by Estrella Damm and the Junta de Andalucía, in addition to being co-financed with European funds and having been declared an event of exceptional public interest by the Government of Spain.
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