Going for Golf

Costa de la Luz - Flagship golf on the Spanish south coast

Novo Sancti Petri

And the city on the south-west coast was the base for Napoleon’s combined Spanish and French fleet defeated at Trafalgar by Admiral Horatio Nelson aboard HMS Victory, in 1805.
So sending a Portsmouth-based writer on a homage to his home city’s greatest naval hero seemed appropriate. Certainly a tour of the historic Spanish city is not to be missed with its quaint mixture of narrow streets and Moorish buildings leaving some parts just as Nelson found it when he first sneaked in by barge to wreak havoc in 1797.

But when it came to golf, this former Royal Navy cadet was forced to run down the White Ensign and hoist the white flag of surrender. easyJet lost both my bats and my threads which failed to arrive in Gibraltar – the key naval base for many Mediterranean manoeuvres and where my hopes were dashed on the famous Rock.

A flight to Gib is the easiest way to reach the least well-known Costa – walk out of the airport and over the border to pick up your hire car literally a few hundred yards away. A 90-minute drive and you are comfortably in Cadiz, where a choice of course awaits, offering variety and quality for a long weekend, or a full week’s stay.

Some 20 miles south of Cadiz lies Novo Sancti Petri, which one day could be as much of a landmark in Spanish golfing history as any other. For its talisman, Seve Ballesteros, built his first course here with 27 holes in 1991, extended to 36 a decade later. It will surely become something of a mecca for those curious to discover how multiple-Major winners fared as course designers. If you find yourself in this neck of the woods, you must wander in and out of the hallmark cork trees and acquaint yourself with what will surely become Seve’s Spanish soliloquy.

You can’t help but be impressed by the great condition of the two courses – the Mar y Pinos called the A and Centro, or the B. You will be inspired by the Seve magic as you wind your way through the residential complexes. The shorter Centro is slightly more open with a little more room off the tee. While the rough is none-too-punishing, the trees that encroach quite severely at times – particularly on the A’s back nine – will test your tee shots, with several tree-lined dog-legs which, while not overly long, don’t lend themselves to being cut-off.

Most of the greens are either raised or have slopes that can send your ball scuttling left, right, or back towards you. But upturned saucers on a Swiss mountainside like Seve’s work at Crans-sur-Sierre they are not, and you will find putting a joy on well-paced greens that show no signs of the wear and tear that blight many popular tourist tracks. My day on the A coincided with a Levanter – an African wind from the south – gusting at 35-40mph, making it incredibly tough and leaving my scorecard in as many pieces as my lost luggage ticket.

Like Nelson, if you turned a blind eye out to sea, you would still see the attraction of the sixth hole. A tight tee shot down the left carries over a dip to a raised green that falls away sharply to a bunker and run off area on the right – all superbly framed by the azure blue Atlantic and sweeping sandy beach over the fence.

I would like to blame my borrowed clubs for my shortcomings. You can practice here to your heart’s content, however, with an excellent driving range and short game area, plus a par-three course among the trees. Throw in that the club now has control of the town’s original 18-hole public course as a further option – and arrangements with two other top courses in the area – and Novo Sancti Petri has all the right ingredients to make your stay on the ‘Coast of Light’ a dazzling one.