“It is a great honor to have a European Tour tournament here again.”
Rafael Fontán Zubizarreta has been the president of the Aloha Golf Club since 2010 (he was re-elected to the position in 2014). A lawyer from Bilbao with an office in Marbella, where he has lived for many years, he shows his satisfaction at the fact that this Marbella course will once again host a major international professional tournament, and is proud of the solidarity that characterizes the club’s members.
-What does the return of the European Tour, in this case Women’s, to Aloha mean for your club?
-For us it is a great honor because we have had three European Tour championships and the return of the Tour means that we are again recognized as a prepared golf course that knows how to organize things well and that is in perfect condition. We are delighted to host it again.
-What will the great professional golfers who will participate in the Spanish Open find in Aloha?
-First of all, a very welcoming atmosphere, because the members are excited to have a great championship again, and then they are going to find a very well worked course, because we are doing a special maintenance program together with Troon, who is now taking the golf course to us. They are going to find a course in excellent condition. And this in spite of the fact that the Open is at the end of the summer, when it is usually more difficult for the courses to be in very good condition.
In view of the tournament, we have started the reform of all the fairway bunkers to provide them with a new drainage, which in fact they do not have it because they were exactly the same as they were built forty years ago. We will finish in mid-August and their original design will not be touched at all. The work is being done by the company Jerigolf, which has great experts in the field.
Aloha has a well-deserved reputation as one of the great courses on the Costa del Sol. What makes it different from others?
-Aloha has that special Javier Arana touch, with some very long par 3s that compensate a bit for the par 4s, which are shorter, and it is a very strategic course where you have to know how to place the ball, where you play all the irons in the bag and it is a lot of fun. It also has very versatile greens, complicated when you want to get complicated, and friendly when you want to get friendly for amateurs. I think Aloha differs from the others in that it is a relatively short course with some par 3’s that compensate for that ‘defect’ of length, but at the same time it is very strategic.
-Aloha is also known for its cosmopolitanism, for the diversity of nationalities among its members, and for the many activities the club organizes…
-Yes, 85 percent of the members are foreigners. We have I think 25 different nationalities. The main one is British, with about 30 percent. The second largest group is the Nordics – Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns – who together represent about 30 percent. The Spanish make up around 15 percent, the Irish around 10 percent, the Germans around 7 percent, and then the rest of the nationalities.
Aloha is characterized by its good social atmosphere. We celebrate a lot of events throughout the year – dinners, parties, championships – and we have a great vocation for charity tournaments. The Marbella Town Hall gave us an award in 2012 for being the club with the most charity tournaments. Last year we hosted eight, and we believe that we are privileged and therefore we have an obligation to lend a hand in our environment to people who are having a hard time. We have that vocation and the members are very supportive. I am very proud of the members because they support all the charity tournaments, and that speaks very well of them.
-The club’s facilities have undergone major renovations in recent years, which have affected, among other things, the clubhouse and the parking lot. Do you plan to undertake new works in the short term?
-Next year we are going to change the irrigation facilities of the field, and we are also planning to finish the renovation of some of the outbuildings.
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