Aloha

Immaculately maintained, the course has a par of 72 and an overall length of 6,900 yards so don’t believe other course reviews that say Aloha is not a long course – it certainly is off the back markers! Length is not the only factor hindering a good score here – the holes are laid out on hilly, sometimes tight terrain – with several blind approaches to greens. The many multi-tiered putting surfaces will also test your putting to the limit.

The front and back nine both start with a long par five followed by two testing par fours to set the tone for each half of the round. Not one of the four par threes on the course are under 195 yards so a dozen shots on the scorecard at these holes will be very good scoring indeed.

The par four 7th is one of the more interesting - and controversial - holes at Aloha, requiring a blind approach shot to the tiniest green on the course, which sits in a small hollow on the other side of a rise in the fairway. The only long par four on the course arrives at the 18th and this brute of a hole provides a tough finish, as water cuts into the left side of a narrow fairway that leads to an elevated, multi-tiered home green.

The European Tour’s short-lived Andalaucia Open was held between 2007 and 2012 and three of the six events were hosted at Aloha Golf Club. Lee Westwood won the first tournament in 2007 with a twenty under par aggregate of 268 then Thomas Levet claimed the title the following year, posting a total of 272 before beating Oliver Fisher in a play-off. The championship moved to Malaga and Seville for three years before returning to Aloha for a final fling in 2012, when Julien Quesne pipped Matteo Manassero by two strokes to lift the trophy with a seventeen under par score of 271.

The following edited extract is from “The golf courses of Javier Arana” by Alfonso Erhardt Ybarra and is reproduced here with kind permission from the author:

The Club de Golf Aloha in Marbella was built on land owned by the Banco de Bilbao by one of the bank’s executives - who then became the first chairman – José Maria Ibarrondo. In January 1972, Ibarrondo contacted Javier to let him know that the bank had begun to build blocks of flats in the area and wanted to use fifty hectares of rolling terrain to build a pretty, intriguing and challenging course. Javier accepted the engagement gladly and construction started in late 1972 through the engineering firm Ibergolf, headed by Carlos Corsini.

The fifty hectares available for the layout made for a tight fit, but Javier found the way to exploit the strengths of the plot to create an appealing golf course, while accommodating all manner of compromises to work around the property developments that would later be built adjacent to the holes. The absence of water and the location of the course prompted him to resort to an unaccustomed solution: water hazards. He told Carlos Corsini: ‘I have put in a few lakes (they are in vogue) because I don’t trust that little stream.’

To adapt the layout to the difficult terrain – which is very hilly – Javier varied some of the patterns commonly seen in his designs. He used the flatter, more open spaces to create the four par fives, while the four par threes – three of which are over 200 metres long – were used as connective tissue across the steeper areas. Yet there was still not enough space to fit in par fours of the length Javier preferred, so he focused on a type of hole outside his usual repertoire – the short par four of about 300 metres. There are four such holes at Aloha, all of which display Arana’s ability to make players’ lives difficult over a short distance through astute placement of hazards off the tee and careful placement and contouring of the greens.

Aloha boasts a splendid set of greens which Arana designed using detailed drawings prior to construction. The complexity of the greens helps make up for the relatively short yardage of the layout. As in almost all Javier’s designs, there is a mix of tiers (5th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th), severe tilt (8th, 11th, 14th) and elaborate internal contours (1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 15th). The large size of the greens – several of them are over thirty metres long – emphasises accuracy in approach shots, because at Aloha holing out in two putts is always tricky.

An insightful player realizes from the outset that the course is not really as short as its physical yardage suggests, because the narrow fairways flanked by eucalyptus groves demand that tee shots be well placed if trouble is to be avoided. Leaving one’s driver in the golf bag is generally a prudent choice. At Aloha, careless players are probably penalised more severely than at any other Arana course. None of his other layouts provides such an advantage from properly placing the drive on the way to posting a good score.

When Javier fell seriously ill in late 1974, Enrique Canales took charge of overseeing the completion of the course before its inauguration. Javier Arana’s last course finally opened on 25 October 1975.

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