“Last year was the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of this course and I can assure you that in this time we have evolved a lot,” says Ignacio Apolinario, director of Santa Clara Golf Marbella.
At the moment,” continues the course director, “we are immersed in a deep program of changes in the club, making some reforms that were very necessary and that we have finally put in place”. “In a way,” Apolinario continues, “we have taken advantage of the great disaster we had last year with the flooding caused by the great storm in May 2011, which caused the Las Siete Revueltas stream that crosses the course to overflow. It caused significant damage”.
When we made the most urgent repairs to alleviate that catastrophe,” he continues, “we also started other reforms that were already necessary, such as changing the 6th hole, a 173-meter par three. We have completely redone it, placing it further to the right, because there was the problem that if you missed on the left the ball would end up in the fairway of the 5th, with the danger that this entailed, in addition to slowing down the game, which is one of the biggest complaints of the players”.
“Also,” adds Santa Clara’s director, “we have fixed the ‘jewel in the crown’, the 14th hole, a par 5, which is the course’s handicap one. There we had a serious problem with the stream that runs through it, which in a way made it an unfair hole, because if you went left, the area was marked as accidental water, and it was a nuisance because you also lost balls, you had to repeat your shots…. Now we have channeled the stream, so we have also gained up to 15 meters of width in certain areas of the fairway”.
“Apart from this,” Apolinario emphasizes, “the maintenance of Santa Clara continues one hundred percent: we are changing tees, greens, planting trees, buying state-of-the-art machinery…”.
“We’ve also corrected a little bit the original design idea, a parkland with no rough. Now we are starting to have some, to draw the fairways, and the aspect is much nicer. In any case, we don’t want the rough to penalize the players too much because the philosophy of this course is that it should be fun and enjoyable.”
-Despite the crisis, Santa Clara is a successful field…
-Yes, but like all of us, we have had to adapt to the economic situation the country is going through and restructure, adapt prices, etc. In this sense we have made a great reform, separating the price of the green fee from the buggy. Before they went together and now you can choose between walking or baby carriage without having to pay the “full package”.
-In summer you always organize big tournaments….
-In August we celebrate our traditional gold cup, which is five days of golf with some very fun tournaments and with different game modalities. The first one, for the tenth anniversary, is individual stableford modality. The next day the President’s Cup is played, best ball pair. After that, the Santa Clara Cup is played as a scramble couple; and finally the Gold Cup, two consecutive days, is played as an individual medal play scratch. And the prices of these competitions are going to be very tight.
-What do you think about the rumor that there could be a special tax for golf courses?
-This would be a huge mistake. The commercial fields are suffering a lot from the crisis. Our main markets, the British and Irish, are very affected and others have not been able to replace them. Golf, especially on the Costa del Sol, has been a total revulsive for tourism. I compare the golf courses on the Costa del Sol as the blast furnaces of Biscay. They are the ones that move all the economic activity in the area and have been able to create the deseasonalization of tourism. From October to May people only come here to play golf. We have to take care of this industry, not contribute to sink it with excessive taxes because it would make many courses unviable.
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