Valderrama - Simply the best - Sports News From Around Spain in H! Society Magazine

11310 Sotogrande, Prov de Cadiz, Spain

Valderrama - Simply the best 11310 Sotogrande, Prov de Cadiz, Spain

Words by Peter Leonard 01/01/2008

With 50 existing golf courses, and at least 35 other projects on the drawing boards, the Costa del Sol is Europe’s premier golfing destination. But it’s not all about quantity. This month, in the first of a regular series on the courses of the “Costa del Golf”, we feature Valderrama – widely recognised as the finest course in Europe.

It is sometimes an exasperating responsibility being president of Valderrama Golf Club. There you are, presiding over one of the world’s most meticulously designed and immaculately nurtured golf courses – oft-described as “the Augusta of Europe” – and everyone just wants to talk about the notorious 17^th.

Of course, there is a feeling that Jaime Ortiz Patiño derives some mischievous enjoyment from the hole’s notoriety: he did – after all – turn it into an American-style “stadium” (or amphitheatre) hole. That way thousands of spectators have been able to have a front-seat view of various players’ memorable misfortunes over the years… Tiger Woods watching incredulously as a ball he hit majestically pin-high rolled back off the green into the water, for a double bogey on the last day of the 1999 American Express World Golf Championship... Colin Montgomerie suffering a similar fate in this year’s Volvo Masters. And then there’s Málaga-born Miguel Angel Jimenez. In the 1994 Volvo Masters he carded a birdie-4 in the first round, an albatross-2 in the second (still the only one recorded in tournament play), another birdie in the third and an eagle-3 in the final round. The following year he carded 4-6-5-9!

Sr Ortiz Patiño, the grandson of a Bolivian mining tycoon, moved to Sotogrande in the 1970s and, in 1984 he was able to realise a long-held dream to buy Las Aves (aka Sotogrande’s “New Course” – now Valderrama) as well as some surrounding land and, with original designer Robert Trent Jones, “bring it to a greater potential”.

Their efforts were so successful that, in 1988, the course was chosen to host the inaugural Volvo Masters – grand finale of the European Tour. The event remained at Valderrama until 1996, before returning to its “spiritual home” in 2002. In the intervening years, the course became the first outside Britain or the US to host the Ryder Cup (1997), and was the venue for the 1999 and 2000 American Express World Golf Championships - the former won by Tiger Woods, even after his mishap on the 17^th, in a play-off against Jiménez.