The Guadalhorce Golf Club celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2013. It was conceived by a group of people from Malaga who saw the need to create a course that would welcome golfers from Malaga. who were mostly dissatisfied with El Parador, to become, in addition, one of the most sought after by European fans visiting the Costa del Sol.
Designed by the Finnish Kosti Kuronen, the Guadalhorce Golf Club course was extensively remodeled a few years ago by Miguel Angel Jimenez, who gave it his personal hallmark.
Salvador Álvarez , closely linked to the club for twenty-one years and to the golf industry in general, is its director.
-How has the club evolved over the years? How did the idea of creating it come about?
-Although work on the course began a quarter of a century ago, it was opened for play in 1989. This was a totally Malaga project, very complicated at first, which was started by a group of members of El Parador, almost all of them with very old licenses and low handicaps. They had their discrepancies with the policy that was followed at that time in that club and decided to undertake a real adventure to ensure that the people of Malaga had an 18-hole course with a family character, as well as its fee system. It was to bring golf to families.
The initiative was taken by ten people, including the then president of the Andalusian Federation, Mr. Ángel de la Riva, who brought together Mr. Pedro Casado, Mr. José Luis Valcarce, Mr. Ignacio Gómez, Mr. Gonzalo Vergara, Mr. Juan José Gómez, Mr. Ignacio Abad, Mr. Rafael Durán, Mr. Erick Nielsen and Mr. José Luis Gross.
They searched for and located this old farm of the Larios family with an 18th century farmhouse, which, of course, had to be completely restored under the direction of the architect Ignacio Gómez Temboury.
Another adjacent property was also acquired in order to have more space and to be able to expand at any time the project that had been initially planned. At the beginning it was only intended to make nine holes because there was no money for more, but finally a Finnish group was found, of the businessman Kauko Rastas, willing to participate and it was possible to make the eighteen holes.
With the crisis of the 90’s, the Finns had difficulties to sell their share package and that created tensions in the club. Finally, after a hell of lawsuits and bankruptcy issues, in 2000 an agreement was reached with them to buy their part, under the presidency of Mr. José Enrique Martínez Genique. That is why I believe that Guadalhorce was really born as a Malaga field at that time.
Today we are a 650-member club that has been gradually developing and improving. Since then we have not stopped making investments to finish the project. In these years we will have planted about 2,000 trees and the course has been redesigned by our honorary member Miguel Angel Jimenez, during the term of the current board whose president, Mr. Javier Alonso Martinez, was treasurer for eight years in the previous legislature. That was about seven years ago, and as a course is always a living entity, we have continued to reform and improve it continuously.
Guadalhorce is a non-profit club, and every extra income is invested in the course and the club to better serve our members.
Our idea is that members can come here with their children, and for that we have a system of monitors who attend to them and teach them to play golf without the parents having to take care of them while they are at the club.
These children of members have been and are a reference in the world of golf. For example, Pablo Martín Benavides, whom I encourage to return to the fight, and a whole generation that became zero handicap or plus one. José María Zamora is also a member, who is now tournament director of the European Tour and who holds the most championship titles in the club’s list of winners.
Guadalhorce was a club that was set up with a very traditional spirit, with people who had a great trajectory in the world of golf, and that was noticeable from the beginning because we soon acquired a cache and a tradition that other courses take much longer to achieve.
-Describe the field…
-First of all, I would point out that Guadalhorce is a course with huge greens, difficult, but very noble in slopes, with some difficulty to read them. Reaching the green may be easy, but making two putts is not so easy.
The first nine holes are a little steeper, more typical English parkland, although there are only a couple of gentle slopes on the 1st and 5th fairways. The rest are gentle hills and watercourses.
The tee-off on hole 6 is spectacular because it is high and you have the whole fairway below you, which always encourages you to drive with everything you have in you.
The second nine, the lower part of the course, is flatter, with longer holes. On the 15th, for example, it is very difficult to reach the green of two.
This route is greatly influenced by the prevailing easterly or westerly winds, which are the predominant ones, and cause the course to change completely. In this second round, also without houses, as in the first, there are many lakes and hardly any out-of-bounds. There are even two holes, 14 and 16, which run parallel to the river, which is considered a water hazard. The 17th, redesigned by Miguel Angel Jimenez, is spectacular. The green has become an isthmus surrounded by water that can only be accessed by a small section of fairway. The 18th hole, with the clubhouse in the background, is also beautiful.
And despite Miguel’s reforms, which made the field more technical, we have not noticed any major differences in the overall results with respect to those achieved with the previous design.
It is a pleasant course to play and we do not keep it very penalized, although we have the possibility of complicating it with the high rough, flag positions, etc.
We are currently renovating bunkers, doing important road work and improving the clubhouse.
-The clubhouse service is also one of the features of Guadalhorce…
-Yes. For twenty years we have had a wonderful restaurant concessionaire, Doña Francisquita, which unfortunately has left us, and now we are in competition to sign with another one. At the moment we are testing with a chain called Logikatering, which, despite the improvised way it came in, is managing to maintain the restaurant levels we were used to.
As for the club’s services, I would like to point out Iván Hurtado’s IH school, which Pablo Martín wants to join in order to set up a first-class training center, with a fitting and approach area, bunkers of different depths, its own putting green, swing analysis, etc.
Leave a Reply