Tom Huntley, a 30 year-old IT consultant from London, and three pals have recently returned from a weekend break playing golf courses on Spain's Costa Blanca.
Over the four-day period they played El Saler, rated one of the finest in Europe and former home of the Spanish Open, Oliva Nova, designed by Seve Ballesteros and the La Sella, the first course created by Jose Maria Olazabal.
Joining Tom, a 16-handicapper, were two fellow Swansea-natives Henry Williams (29) who plays off 12 and insurance broker Ben Holborrow (30) off 22. Liverpudlian 'Baz Bailey (30) another 16-handicapper and a self-confessed equipment junkie, completed the quartet.
This is Tom's story….
Thursday -
El Saler
Having arrived on EasyJet at Alicante the previous day, we made an early start on Thursday to get to the course for our tee time. Used a multi-map website for our directions but it was unreliable. The course isn't well signposted, so we recommend you buy a map.
We eventually found it but the pro shop was closed and with no visible staff elsewhere we waited and admired the golf guide ratings on the clubhouse walls (including No.2 in Europe from Golf World) and a signed scorecard from Bernhard Langer's 62. (This is also the course where the Seve Trophy was played last year ED).
Eventually we were ushered to the caddiemaster and paid our 75 euros each for the round and were on the first tee almost before we knew it.
The first nine holes turned out to be very tight and not the links course we had expected. The fairways were undulating and we were impressed with the course itself and the fairways and greens. There was some quite heavy rough but, basically, if you missed the fairways you ended up in the trees. Quite a few provisional balls were hit!
The back nine opened out a bit along the Mediterranean shore and the wind picked up as the dunes came into play. There are some very long holes and a couple of challenging par-3s. We all rated the 18th, a sweeping downhill dogleg to the left, as one of the best closing holes we had played and imagined that it was a quality hole to finish a big tournament. The green is big but tough; bogey-5 is quite acceptable.
We were looking forward to a beer, but the lack of activity was astonishing. The hassle involved encouraged us to move on to a local bar. The course is wonderful but don't expect much hospitality.
(It was here about ten years ago, that my wife and I had our luggage stolen from our hire car in the car park at El Saler. So make sure your belongings are kept out of sight as it's a bit obvious that easily identified number plates on hire cars are going to be a soft touch when their owners are away on the course for at least four hours. Security is somewhat lax. ED)
