Weblinks for the Golf Courses of the Costa Del Sol Near Marbella
This is a list of all the golf courses on the Costa Del Sol within drivable distance of Marbella. Some courses have yet to build a website - I have included a contact number for these.
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Estepona Golf
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Estepona Golf is privately owned by Rory Leader.
His policy is to concentrate on visiting golfers as a 'pay as you play' course.
The 18 hole course, which is located on the inland side of the main coastal road at Km. 150, just one mile from Estepona town centre, was designed by José Luis López and first opened in 1989. The design uses the natural landscape which is set against the Sierra Bermeja mountain range, and enjoys sea views from most parts of the course. The fairways are wide and the greens large which provides a challenge for players of all levels, but doesn't penalise the average golfer.
There are many palms, eucalyptus and wild olive trees on the course, and players have a great opportunity to enjoy many rare species of wildlife, particularly on the second half.
Well worth a visit - Esteponagolf.com
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Swallow Hotels Take Over Carnoustie
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The venue for next year's Open Golf Championship has been snapped up by one of the country's biggest hotel groups.
After months of negotiation and speculation, Swallow Hotels officially announced yesterday that it had bought the Carnoustie Golf Course Hotel and Resort.
The cost of the 85-bedroom hotel and its associated facilities, which began trading as the Swallow Carnoustie immediately, has not been disclosed.
Rumours of financial difficulties and poor trading dogged the hotel, which was owned by a consortium headed by publicity-shy Dundee-property developer Michael Johnston, since it opened in 1999.
Swallow Hotels chief executive Peter Gray said: "With owning one unit it is difficult to get the right levels of trade into the hotel - like the high levels that are needed at a place like Carnoustie.
"We have six other hotels with golf courses and others associated with nearby courses, and we have the Swallow Golf Trail which will now include Carnoustie.Our immediate plans are to have a successful summer trading at Carnoustie.
"It has first-class accommodation and it is not just about golf, so there's no reason to say that it can't be one of the very best hotels in Scotland.
"You can't ask for much more than a hotel that overlooks the 18th hole of an Open championship golf course."
Hotel director Iain Fleming said the company would now be reviewing the hotel's operation to find out what improvements could be made to the seven-year-old complex.
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Find a Golf Course the Virtual Earth Way
Cybergolf Cities couples golf course content with Virtual Earth web service to complete the search process for golf consumers; city-specific sites are tooled with multidimensional mapping to ease the challenge of golf course location.
This new series of over 100 local city golf sites has been designed and developed to help golf consumers find and organize course information on a geographical basis.
"We are very excited that Cybergolf is using the Virtual Earth web service to enhance and expand their online marketing services," said Stephen Lawler, general manager of the Virtual Earth Business Unit at Microsoft Corp. "Cybergolf's use of Virtual Earth's satellite imagery, coupled with rich mapping capabilities, has created an incredibly powerful yet simple tool to view local city golf courses and their surroundings."
Cybergolf City sites include feature golf courses located on interactive maps with photos of the golf courses and GPS satellite views. Each course site includes golf specials, tee-time links, events (and registration capabilities), online pro shop and directions. Each local site is developed to easily add local content to RSS readers and personalized sites such as My MSN allowing golf consumers to readily have local golf specials, events and news automatically updated and organized on their personalized sites.
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Golf Holiday in Cork - The Prize
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THE 2006 GMWN Trophy, which was enjoyed by a record number of entrants from local clubs in 2005, will have a new venue for the final shoot-out which this year sees a new format for ladies.
While the men will stay in the same singles format, the ladies will be able to compete in a pairs competition with players enjoying betterball Stableford matchplay rounds to make it to the last eight pairs to compete in the final.
Marple Golf Club will host the final for the last 20 men and eight ladies pairs who will compete in their respective championships in the final on September 10th 2006.
There is a terrific range of prizes on offer with the winning ladies pair and the winning man each receiving a golfing holiday for two in Cork, including accommodation, flights, transfers and golf courtesy of main sponsor Peter Walsh of Fairway Golf Holidays in Bramhall.
Full story over at the South Manchester Reporter
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GPS Solutions for Golf Courses
Europe's GPS leader, Elumina installed the state-of-the-art ProLink system at: Saint Endreol, La Motte-en-Provence, France; Valle del Este, Almeria, Spain; La Quinta, Malaga, Spain; and Greetham Valley Golf Club, Rutland, UK. Elumina will deliver ProLink systems on up to 18 of Europe's finest golf courses and resorts during the first quarter 2006, and high-profile installations for quarters two and three are expected to be announced in the coming months.
"2005 was a groundbreaking year for GPS throughout Europe and 2006 will bring exponential growth in this burgeoning industry," says Mark Smart, Managing Director of Elumina. "ProLink's emergence as the global leader in GPS solutions for golf courses, Elumina's position as the official GPS partner of the PGAs of Europe and Royal and Ancient's decision to permit the use of distance measuring devices in competition will help the European market to grow substantially over the next two years."
The ProLink/Elumina partnership is a result of intensified demand for the ProLink GPS system worldwide. In addition to Elumina, ProLink's trusted international partners include On Course GPS, the fastest-growing GPS business in South Africa, and Pacific Golf Management, the second largest owner/operator of golf courses in the world and first in Japan. One of the fastest growing businesses in the international golf industry with offices in the UK, Spain and France, Elumina is building the ProLink brand across Europe (and the Middle East) with its superior in-house engineering, mapping, technical services and innovative financing options.
"Elumina has experienced dynamic growth with the ProLink brand," says Lawrence Bain, President and CEO of ProLink Solutions. "Courses with ProLink GPS bolster customers' experiences and realize incremental revenue through pace of play improvements, food and beverage sales and on-screen advertising."
Based in Chandler, Arizona, ProLink Solutions industry-leading technology and marketing richness is installed at more than 700 resort, private and public courses worldwide -- more than triple the installations of all its competitors combined. World-famous course partners of ProLink include Valderrama Golf Club in San Roque, Spain, Dai-Takarazuka in Osaka, Japan and Kapalua Resort in Maui, Hawaii.
For full PR and information about ProLink
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Chinese Lay Claim to the Origin of Golf
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FOR centuries, the Scots have claimed it as one of their great inventions, a Royal and Ancient game born on the windy links.
But now Scotland's reputation as the cradle of golf is under threat from an unlikely challenger - China
According to a leading Chinese academic, golf was being played by Chinese nobles as early as the tenth century - 500 years before a club was swung at St Andrews.
Professor Ling Hongling, of Lanzhou University, claims to have uncovered evidence of golf being played in China in AD945 in a book called the Dongxuan Records written during the Song Dynasty (AD960-1279).
The game described in the book is called chuiwan - chui meaning "to hit" and wan meaning "ball". It was played with ten different jewel-encrusted clubs, including a flat-surfaced "cuanbang" - equivalent to a modern-day driver - and a "shaobang" (three-wood or spoon).
According to Prof Ling, golf only arrived in Scotland after it was exported to Europe by Mongolian travellers during the late Middle Ages.
The claims are certain to add fuel to fierce international controversy about which country invented the sport, now played by 50 million people around the world. In 2003, a pair of French historians uncovered a picture from a 15th-century book showing men outside a Loire Valley chateau playing a ball and stick game known as "pallemail".
Scotland's claim as the home of golf rests on a resolution dated 6 March, 1457, when King James II of Scotland banned football and "ye golf".
The first surviving written reference to golf in St Andrews is contained in Archbishop Hamilton's Charter of 1552. This reserves the right of the people of the Fife town to use the links land "for golff, futball, schuteing and all gamis". As early as 1691, the town had become known as the "metropolis of golfing".
Scottish enthusiasts have argued that, while not the first to play stick-and-ball games, Scots were the first to use holes rather than targets - a key innovation that led to modern golf.
But Prof Ling says the Chinese book makes reference to a prominent Chinese magistrate of the Nantang Dynasty (AD937-975) instructing his daughter "to dig goals in the ground so that he might drive a ball into them with a purposely crafted stick".
Prof Ling said: "When golf was introduced into China most people naturally assumed that golf was a foreign game. In fact this is contrary to the historical facts. Golf, as we know it today, clearly originated in China."
Malcolm Campbell, a former editor of Golf Monthly, said Prof Ling's findings, if authentic, may undermine Scotland's claim as the birthplace of golf. But this may be of little importance - the country continues to be the game's spiritual guardian, as it has for centuries. Scotland is the traditional and cultural home of the game and will always be.
"I don't think the Royal and Ancient Golf Club will be moving to Peking."
A spokesman for St Andrews Links Trust, which runs the golf courses in the Fife town, said: "It has long been clear that there were many different variations of this rudimentary pastime, but the game of golf as we know it today was first played here at St Andrews.
"The links are known around the world as the Home of Golf and attract many visiting golfers each year whose dream is to play here," said the spokesman
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Nipomo's New Golf Course
A panorama of Scottish-like dunes and a wee bit of the Highlands has been baptized in Nipomo.
The Old Course at Monarch Dunes -- 18 holes of golf that is part of the Woodlands development -- opened Wednesday.
A planned Jan. 1 opening was delayed three days by an energy-packed storm that brought more than 6 inches of rain to Nipomo.
"It was tested right out of the box," said course architect Damian Pascuzzo Tuesday, who added that project engineers were breathing a sigh of relief after the big storm. The course's five lakes swelled during the two days of rain, inundating some fairways, but there was no structural damage.
About a half-dozen eucalyptus trees fell and there was plenty of debris to be picked up following the storm, but "the golf course was fine," Tom Elliot, superintendent at Monarch Dunes, said Wednesday afternoon.
Monarch Dunes is the first of 45 holes being built at the Woodlands. A nine-hole executive course is in the early construction phase.
The overall development includes 1,300 homes, a shopping center, business park and a 500-room full-service resort. It will be built out during the next 15 years.
PGA Tour player Steve Pate joined Pascuzzo -- also overseeing another nine holes at the Woodlands -- on the Old Course project in 2004.
"It was a really perfect time for him to come aboard because we hadn't done any fairway shaping," Pascuzzo said.
Pate's role, Pascuzzo explained, included being a "sounding board" on how a golfer might attack a hole and also how to shape the risk-reward options.
What has been captured in the design is a landscape that complements nearby Guadalupe Dunes. Former dense eucalyptus groves have given way to a links layout that includes a variety of risk-reward shots, water features and 35 bunkers. Putting surfaces are firm velvet bent grass greens. They average more than 6,000 square feet.
"We want that bounce and roll back into the game of golf," said Matt Kalbak, general manager at Monarch Dunes who arrived on site in early October.
The course features fescue fairways and 2-inch roughs and five tee boxes, stretching to 6,800 yards. That layout can be tricked up to 7,200 yards for future tournament play, said Pascuzzo, by incorporating two of the executive course nine holes into an alternative layout.
"We've rolled the dice a little by creating this Dunes style of golf course rather than a parklands style," said Pascuzzo, a Cal Poly graduate. "I'm very pleased with it. It's a fun place to play. It's got enough mystery and challenge to get people to come back."
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Abu Dhabi Golf Tournament Looking for Volunteers
With the inaugural Abu Dhabi Golf Championship around the corner, the tournament committee is actively recruiting volunteers at various levels to assist in staging one of the most prestigious sporting events ever held in Abu Dhabi. . Various volunteer opportunities are available, from caddies to marshals, crossing stewards, scorers, spotters, TV spotters, to operating mobile scoreboards, hole by hole scoreboards and media scoreboards.
Volunteer support is pivotal to the success of any event and as members of the organising team that help to make the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship the most successful sporting event to have taken place in Abu Dhabi. At 68, the oldest volunteer Jack McGuiness celebrates his passion for the game with his wife Joan, and talks about his past experiences and expectations from the tournament.
“It's an opportunity to give something back to Abu Dhabi,� says 68 year old Jack:
Jack's past experiences have given him numerous opportunities to meet the world's leading golfers, see top quality golf, total focus and true professionalism in action. It also gave him insights into a more ‘human' side of the golfing stars, their interests, hobbies, and above all their dedication to charities and community involvement. “I had exciting opportunities to meet Tiger, Montgomerie, Garcia and other star players on many occasions. These unique experiences go beyond golf and there are always things to learn from such fantastic athletes who are also outstanding personalities - true lessons in life.�
“Being a volunteer will give us a unique opportunity to give something back to Abu Dhabi as a sign of gratitude for what Abu Dhabi has been giving us over the years,� says McGuiness. “During our time here we have seen tremendous growth of the emirate and we are thrilled to be a part of this unique event that will spotlight Abu Dhabi as a genuine jewel of the Middle East.�
He believes that the golf culture is developing rapidly in the UAE. “Sixteen years ago, we could only play on a sand course. When the first grass course was created in 2000, we were still a small group of enthusiastic expatriates. Five years later, UAE already has a professional national team – that is quite an amazing development in such a short time span.�
With recent efforts to boost incoming tourism to Abu Dhabi and the construction of new golf courses under way, the number of European tourists coming to Abu Dhabi on golfing holidays is on the increase. In the near future, Abu Dhabi is expected to open up to more Asian tourists and golfing enthusiasts, especially Thai, Japanese and Chinese.
Commenting on the challenges involved in organizing such a complex event, McGuiness said: “The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority has done an amazing job over such a short period of its existence. Not only that it organized a world class event, but it also managed to gather the world's best players to come and experience the national course. This means the whole world will see what wonderful facilities Abu Dhabi has to offer. In addition, opening of the Emirates Palace doors to the participants is an important step in promoting Abu Dhabi with its unique tourist offer. After being pampered in luxury for a week, the players will definitely want to come back next year!�
Jack's advice for the next generation of golfers:
Advising parents who want to recognize golfing talent in their children, Jack says, “Golf is physically and mentally demanding – it is just you and the ball out there. It is a great sport for cultivating patience in children and an excellent opportunity to get them out in the fresh air.�
Micah Foster, 14, is the youngest volunteer who will be volunteering at the event with his family, brother Nick, 17 and parents Jim and Susan. “There is a wide scope of options that appeal to everyone,� says Nick. “This is the first volunteering experience for me and I am eager to see all the hard work involved in staging of such an event and everything that happens behind the scenes. It is a chance of a lifetime to be a part of a first-time event and one that will create its own history – something to look back at with pride. I think it will be a very rewarding and satisfying experience for the entire family.�
A chance to become part of Golfing history:
If you are inspired by this story, you can also become a part of the action and get a unique opportunity to get close to the world's best players. All volunteers will receive volunteer uniforms and accreditation which will give them access to the course and the clubhouse facilities. They will also have the opportunity to participate in a Volunteer Golf Day to be held at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club in 2006 [confirm date]. You don't have to be a member of the golf club, or an Abu Dhabi / UAE resident to become a volunteer – anyone with passion for golf can apply. While knowledge of golf is preferable, it is not necessary for all volunteer roles. For more information on volunteer opportunities, please visit www.abudhabigolfchampionship.com/volunteer
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Golf Courses Round the World
Quick Guide to Golf Courses around the World
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Golf courses in Europe |
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America's Best Courses
For the 23rd consecutive year, Golf Digest unveils the results of its survey of America's Best New Courses. The newest ranking appears in the January 2006 issue (on newsstands December 13).
The magazine selected Bully Pulpit Golf Course, in North Dakota, as America's Best New Affordable Public Course; The Wilderness at Fortune Bay, in northern Minnesota, as America's Best New Upscale Public Course; and The Alotian Club, outside of Little Rock, Arkansas as the year's Best New Private Course; and Dakata Dunes in Saskatchewan as the Best New Canadian course.
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Wilderness at Fortune Bay, America's Best New Upscale Public |
The full ranking and feature story on America's Best New Courses, along with additional course photography not appearing in the magazine, can be viewed now at http://www.golfdigest.com/bestnew .
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Plenty of Water for the Costa del Sol's Golf Courses
The use of recycled water from sewage treatment plants along the Costa del Sol for washing streets and watering gardens is one of the ways that the western coast water company Acosol is coping with the drought.
In 2004 3.3 cubic hectometres of recycled water were used for gardens and streets but this year the rise in the demand has been spectacular: 5.7 cubic hectometres of treated water from western Costa del Sol sewage plants has been supplied in nearly 11 months.
The golf courses, along with Mijas race course and Selwo Wildlife Park, are the main customers for this water provided by Acosol. Currently 21 of the 30 golf courses on this part of the coast use recycled water. Under the drought decree currently in force fines can be levied for using drinking water for watering gardens and cleaning streets.
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