Real Club de Golf Sotogrande

Officially opened in 1964 Sotogrande was the first course Trent Jones designed in Europe and is blessed with his design philosophy, which consists of building courses perfectly integrated with the natural surroundings which are a great challenge to the better players, but accessible and enjoyable for everyone.

Nothing describes better a round on Real Club de Golf Sotogrande than these words. It is a fascinating course for players of any level which retains all the natural beauty of the land on which it was built only 150 metres from the Mediterranean.

The course has a par of 72 and measures 6.492 metres. It offers long tees, wide fairways and elevated greens delicately moulded and very fast, which embody the biggest difficulty of the course. Of the 100 or so bunkers on the course 69 are placed around the greens which, warn the player to have great accuracy when attacking the pins. The variety of holes is another characteristic of Real Club de Golf Sotogrande, variety not only in shape and distances but in its vegetation: the mixture of cork oaks, pine trees, palm trees and an abundance of other species, provide the course with a wonderful personality and beauty.

Every hole requires the player to plan his attack with care and execute the shots successfully to escape the many strategically placed bunkers and water hazards. The fairways appear wide and the semi-rough is Augusta-like in its appearance, but stray from the short stuff and the wonderful cork, eucalyptus, pine, oak and palm trees – which line almost every fairway – will make life and making par very difficult. Only when the ball drops into the hole will the golfer be able to relax. The putting surfaces are expertly shaped and contoured and they are all wonderfully maintained, making them fast and true all year round.

A round of golf on Real Club de Golf Sotogrande is very well balanced. On the front 9 holes 4 and 7 will highlight good examples of the risk factor which Trent Jones rewards by asking the players to choose whether a hole should be a difficult par or an easy bogey. These can also be said of holes 13 and 15 on the back 9.

The quality of the course is very well reflected by the quality of the champions over a period of many years. Among others there are Severiano Ballesteros, Jose María Olazabal, Roberto de Vicenzo, Sergio García, Padraig Harrington or Rory McIlroy.