Eduardo García Palacios
The marvelous -of course- is above all because of youth, that divine tabby treasure that devours us never to return, if I may use the Borgian-Rubendarian combination. At twenty-something, life is beautiful, or at least it seems so to one, and the spirit and the body, alas, unruly. One, recently graduated from the Faculty, had arrived in Marbella from Bilbao three years before Andalucía Golf was born to work, with his first serious contract, in a newspaper that was being born under the baton of Rafael de Loma and in which Antonio Sánchez was also writing.
Both journalists would create in 1988 the embryonic company that later, with the incorporation of Jeff Kelly, would give rise to Andalucía Golf. Shortly afterwards, Rafael embarked on a new professional path, and Antonio, who came from Madrid, and Jeff, a former London resident, became the editors of the magazine.
Alberto Fernández, an Asturian from Avilés who also, like the others, had left his homeland to work in these sunny and cosmopolitan surroundings, joined the new editorial adventure from the beginning. Alberto, who has been with Golfspain.com for several years, and I, who writes this, previously worked in a magazine in Marbella, where we had the privilege and patience to design the publication with the first Mackintoshes, those little Classics with a tiny black and white screen and a processor of derisory speed.
Those were years in which glamour and jetsetting adorned Marbella, in which construction had not yet wreaked havoc on the Spanish coast, not only in Malaga, and in which golf was beginning to be a very serious thing on the Costa del Sol from the point of view of tourist income. I joined Andalucía Golf a few months after its birth, and my main memories of that time evoke above all the first Volvo Masters, in 1988, and the first Official Journal of the tournament we made, in black and white, of course. And in Valderrama, of course.
The technical means were light years away from today and the Internet was still unknown in our country. So we wrote the contents, chose the photos of the day, laid out the pages and, when everything was ready, we took the road and blanket and took the material to Marbe- lla to first do the phototypesetting and then the printing of the Official Journal. We had to work against the clock to have the copies on time in Valderrama and all the Costa del Sol in the morning.
As time went by, the magazine improved and – cruel destiny – we were getting older. We waded through the sharp crisis of the early 90’s as best we could and managed to reach the new millennium with less hardship and more illusions. Jeff passed away in 2003, but the company, for years with its double masthead (Andalucía Golf / España Golf), was able to overcome the bad times and move forward, until today.
We introduced changes in the masthead and design, experimented with new printing trends on the covers, made a firm commitment to the English language and, twenty-five years later, we continue to work with the illusion of making this magazine an attractive product for readers and, therefore, an effective one for advertisers. We have seen how dozens of golf courses have been opened during these last five decades, how new Spanish champions have emerged on the international scene and how the incomparable Seve said an early farewell to life, how some of the most important professional tournaments in the world have been held in Andalusia (Ryder Cup, AmEx World Cup, Volvo Masters, World Match Play Championship, World Cup, Open de España…), we have, in short, grown up with golf during these two and a half decades.
And if health accompanies us, golfers continue to read us and, above all, companies continue to advertise with us because they trust in the effectiveness of this advertising medium and in our alter ego on the Internet (andaluciagolf.com), this publication will stay alive. Hopefully for many years to come and for you and me to see it.
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