San Roque Club Experience w/ Buggy

The San Roque Club is almost unmatched for scenery and elegance. Home of the European Tour Qualifying School Finals from 1993 - 2007 as well as hosts of the Spanish Open (2005 & 2006). The San Roque Club offers 2 golf courses which are as fun to play as they are beautiful, within a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. Designed by the legendary Dave Thomas, The Old Course is rated amongst the finest golf courses in Europe and always within the top 5 in Spain. The New Course - 6626 m - complements The Old Course while presenting a very different challenge. The designs, by the renowned American golf course designer Perry With its length of 6494m it features beautiful cork oak woods on the front 9 and stunning water hazards on the back 9 holes. This championship golf course is fun to play. The Old Course incorporates the contours of the San Roque hills, giving golfers wonderful views to the Guadalquiton River and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Away from the greens, The San Roque Golf Club also offers an authentic Japanese Restaurant, Bar Jerez for all-day snacks and drinks, excellent practice facilities and Golf Academy as well as Club Membership. The Old course closed at the end of 2019 to allow for the complete renovation of the layout and it will open at the end of 2020. Construction work was then carried out the following year by Atlantic Golf and Southwest Greens, with the Better Billy Bunker system installed in all the sand hazards. Tees and greens were rebuilt with bentgrass, Bermuda grass was used on the fairways, and the two nines were reversed. ...

The New course perfectly complements the David Thomas layout that transformed the site back in the 1980s and which put San Roque onto the world stage of golf. Both Trent Jones and David Thomas had expansive sites on which to practice their arts. In this case, Perry Dye, son of the illustrious Pete, found a limited canvas at odds with the magnanimous acreage to which most US golf architects are accustomed. The San Roque New course is laid over a scant 45 hectares, a vaguely triangular-shaped oblong lying parallel to the ocean and with a sacrosanct nature reserve running along one boundary. To complicate matters, its centrepiece was a huge hill festooned with cork and oak trees. Plainly, ''shifting dirt'', as the Dye dynasty has it, was a priority, as was transplanting trees, hundreds of them. San Roque New is an all-round examination of ability and character where the major test invariably awaits with the approach shot. The New course greens, though large, present small targets in that they have a narrow opening or are angled, often side-on and partially hidden by subtle mounding. The lay-up will be a popular option here. Horticulturally speaking, the New course is unique in several aspects. In what he classifies as his wilderness areas, the architect has introduced a species the Americans know as love grass. Similar to marram grass but finer stemmed and lusher, it lays a knee-high carpet that gives a “Mexican wave” in a breeze. It forms a beautiful backdrop to many holes, along with another innovation: cascading wildflowers, acres of them, whose seeds were brought over from their native Colorado, where Dye is based. The more practical grasses are unusual, too. Dye has used five varieties of hybrid Bermuda on each hole: tees, fairways, greens surrounds and on the putting surfaces. On the greens, it is Tifeagle, a species ideally suited to the climate of Southern Spain. It is one that doesn’t hibernate in winter. It gives a good matt cover and has a finer grain, too, bringing a more consistent roll than the old fashioned Bermuda. Good putters will be licking their lips, although they’d better be sharp-eyed. The greens get a tad slick down-grain and consequently more than a hint slower against it. On cross-grain putts, the ball will wander just a touch at the death so bring your reading glasses! A compelling vista is enhanced by a series of rock retaining walls, built from material unearthed in the construction, and two large lakes. The latter provides irrigation and add spice to four holes: the 7th and 14th greens straddle one lake; the 9th and 18th are separated by the other. The New Course is simply a celebration of golf in its purest form. ...