“We are very proud that the Women’s Spanish Open is being held at our club.”
Since 2013 he has presided over one of the most traditional clubs in Andalusia, the Real Club de Golf Guadalmina. Juan Ramón Martínez Landazábal talks in this interview about the Women’s Spanish Open, which the South Course, designed by Javier Arana, will host next September.
-What does it mean for the RCG Guadalmina to host this tournament of the Women’s European Tour?
-Although many years ago, in 1995 and 1997, we hosted two finals of the European Tour Qualifying School, in the 58 years that the club has been in existence, this September will be the first big European Tour event we have had and the truth is that we are very happy and proud that it will be held here.
-Yours is probably the club that organizes the most amateur tournaments annually, not only in Andalusia but possibly in all of Spain…
-At the social level, for sure. And if we add the open ones and those of the Federation, we have more than one competition a day. We have to take into account that we have two golf courses and that every week we have four social competitions valid for handicap, and then we have many others in which non-members are admitted.
-Is the participation of Azahara Muñoz, the defending champion who was trained at this club, fully confirmed?
-Yes, it will be for sure. When we were approached by the Federation (to host the tournament), we bet on it, among other things because Azahara was trained in our school and is also one of the three honorary members of the club (the others are Fernando Goizueta and Sidney Mathews).
-Their presence will be an added incentive to attract the public to the tournament…
-We hope so. Both Azahara and Noemí (Jiménez), who also trained at our school and is playing on the European Tour, have many followers in our club and in this area and they will surely come to see them. And we also hope to have Carlota Ciganda and most of the great Spanish players, in addition to the great foreign players who play on the Tour.
-The RCG Guadalmina Golf School is a real breeding ground for champions, both female and male….
-The truth is that we are on a good run, a product of a job well done. Apart from Azahara and Noemí, we now have the Spanish amateur champion, Ángel Hidalgo, who has also won the Puerta de Hierro, one of the oldest amateur competitions in Spain. The School is doing a magnificent job with students of all ages, from the youngest. Interestingly, we are having new members thanks to the great work of the School.
-Is the course going to have any preparation for the Open?
This week (mid-May) we are casually renovating 31 of the 61 bunkers that this course has, because some of them suffered a lot from the torrential rains in December and we are going to change the drains and all the sand. Apart from this, we are enlarging the tee of the 14th hole. And, although it does not refer to the course, the club’s facilities are undergoing a remodeling of the cafeteria on the first floor.
-What are the characteristics of this design by Javier Arana?
-It is a wide, open course, with its difficulties of trees, with doglegs to the right and left… it is a course that all players like very much. Amateurs love to play it.
-RCG Guadalmina is one of the Andalusian member clubs with the largest number of members. How many do you have at present?
-We are now about 1,900 members, but in 2008, before the crisis, we were twenty percent more, around 2,300. Most of them are adults, but juniors are also joining little by little.
-So is the social mass being renewed generationally?
-Not as strongly as we would like, because the average age of our members is very high and they stop playing more than those who join a year later. But in any case, in the last three years there has been a balance between those who leave and those who join. For the first time since 2014 there has been no net year-on-year decrease in membership, which is already good news.
-What are the predominant nationalities of the members?
-The RCG Guadalmina is a very cosmopolitan club, with a great variety of nationalities, although with a predominance of Spaniards, approximately half of the total, and then there are the British and those from Nordic countries. The latter, as a whole, adding up different countries, are more than the British. There are also Germans, Italians… up to almost twenty nationalities, but in much smaller percentages.
-In recent years, you have made considerable investments in the renovation of the club. What have these investments consisted of?
-In 2013 we made three very strong investments: the new maintenance shed, which is fantastic and people come from other clubs to see it; we also made a new building, very nice, for the clubhouse, the store and the caddie master, and in what was the old clubhouse and caddie master we built a gymnasium.
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