Enrique Canales Busquets, one of the driving forces behind the development of golf on the Costa del Sol, has passed away at the age of 82. Canales had dedicated almost half a century to this sport both as a player and as a director (Los Naranjos and Santa Clara Marbella) and designer of golf courses (Santa Clara Marbella, Santa Clara Granada and Islantilla Golf in Huelva, the latter in collaboration with Luis Recasens).
Last July, the Malaga-Costa del Sol Tourist Board paid tribute to the designer.
“Canales has contributed with his efforts and his wisdom to the Costa del Sol has become the main destination in Southern Europe and has had the ability to be a perfect ambassador in our land to the arrival of personalities from around the world,” said during the ceremony of recognition the president of the Provincial Council and the Tourist Board of the Costa del Sol, Elias Bendodo.
One of Enrique Canales’ sons, Jose, has followed in his father’s footsteps in the world of golf course design and is the author of Spanish courses in Huelva, Almeria, La Gomera and Navarra, as well as others in Turkey and Venezuela.
INTERVIEW
This is an interview with Enrique Canales published years ago in the magazine Andalucía Golf / España Golf:
He is one of the pioneers of golf in Costa del Sol, a man who has contributed like few others to the development of this sport and this tourist ‘industry’ in this area of Spain.
This Bilbao native, who has lived on the Costa del Sol since his youth, started playing golf at the Malaga Country Club in 1961. “There was a great golfing atmosphere,” recalls Enrique Canales, one of the pioneers of the international launch of golf on the Costa del Sol. “At that time golf was golf above all, there was a local handicap -we were federated but the clubs had their own handicap-, it was a very pure golf, very traditional… there was a great atmosphere”. Enrique came to have a low handicap and won some “more or less important” competitions, remembering “with real enthusiasm” the Iberia Cup, “the classic par excellence of Andalusia”, more than 80 years old, which he won on several occasions, “with the team that we started to shake the Coast”.
-How did you start playing golf?
-When I arrived from the north, I realized that I could not continue here as I had been doing until then, with soccer, skiing or sailing, because I was practically alone, and since I wanted to continue doing some sport, I started with golf.
-And he teamed up with people who would later become very important in the world of golf in this part of Spain…
-The group that began to promote golf on the Costa del Sol was very small. There was Ángel de la Riva, current president of the Andalusian Golf Federation, a man who passed away, Pascual Bejarano, who was running a golf club until the last minute, his brother Fernando, Juan José Gómez-Raggio, who is secretary general of the Andalusian Federation, Pedro Casado, who came from sailing but had started playing at a very young age, and Pepe Gancedo, who at that time was already the best player in the country -I think he had won five Spanish Championships-. He was Ángel de la Riva’s family and played with us when he was here. We had a very good team of players, with handicaps under 5, which in those days was difficult because, of course, the tools were different, the ball was different, the courses were different. Truly, we were the only ones who played golf at a high level on the Costa del Sol. There was a mayor of Malaga, Ladrón de Guevara, who understood us, who asked us how we could teach golf on the coast, which at that time was no more than Guadalmina, Los Monteros and Sotogrande. Then we started a competition, which has had its ups and downs and is still alive and is called the Costa del Sol International, a competition for teams of clubs that came from all over Europe, and all of Europe visited us and knew what the Costa del Sol was. We started the tournament with three fields and we reached eight, and in one of the editions the army had to come to be able to communicate the results from field to field. They sent it to us from Madrid and they set up their tents and it was a spectacle. We won four times with the Malaga Country Club. In our team of the International Costa del Sol, played at the end with us a superclass, Catherine Lacoste, the only European amateur player who has won a professional Open in the United States. This woman went down in history, but then she got out of the way and went home to Biarritz. She had come to the Coast to spend a week, then she stayed for months – she lived in my house – and she was the best player there was in the world, because she was an amateur who beat the professional Americans. And that was the real beginning of golf on the Costa del Sol.
-Then he went to live in Marbella….
-Banco Bilbao had a project in Marbella called Aloha. It was an undefined project. The bank had no real estate spirit, but a series of advisors somewhat influenced by me, who was already involved in the world of golf, went ahead with the project. I took over the project when its designer, Javier Arana, died, for me the best designer Spain has ever had by far, apart from the fact that he was a super golf player. I took the unfinished course, finished it, formed my team, and took everything forward.
-That’s when he turned a hobby into a profession….
-Exactly. I started to get out of golf as a sport and started to get into the professional side. I have had a huge tendency towards machinery, which I like very much because my business is in cars. I started with machinery and then I have one thing that I think is important and that is my facility for drawing -in plan, in perspective-, and I am capable of being a landscape designer without having studied landscape design. Why? Because of years. My career is the longest on the Costa del Sol. I started playing golf and have ended up designing golf courses, not one but many.
-After Aloha, what was your next professional stage?
-I went to Los Naranjos with Herman Sauer, who called me and gave me more than I would have thought, and all with a single objective: to restyle the course, put it in condition, because it was closed, open it and sell it. And that’s what I did: I opened the course and sold it. At that time I made La Dama de Noche, where I had a 30 percent share, and Herman Sauer the remaining 70 percent. I also did La Siesta and I started to get my hands on Islantilla, which is a great golf course. The best ranking of European golf courses that I have seen in my life -and I have studied many- is the one made by British Airways, and Islantilla was there among the 50 best in Europe. Then I spent a few years inactive in golf and more involved with my business in Malaga, and then I started with Santa Clara. I found myself with a fantastic property, which gave me all the confidence in the world, but with a difficult estate, although in the best place in Marbella, and that we had to give it quality, because if we give quality we will never go down; the day we do not have quality we will be lost. I believe that this is the best maintained on the Coast at the moment.
In the photo, Enrique Canales receives from the manager of the Costa del Sol Tourist Board, Arturo Bernal, a plaque of recognition for his career in the world of golf.
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