Top 50 Golf Courses of Argentina 2021
It’s just over two years since we updated our Argentinian listings so it’s time to reveal the results from our latest biennial ranking update for this important golfing nation. With around 350 courses in operation around the country, Argentina accounts for nearly half the number of golfing layouts on the continent so it’s a big hitter on the South American sporting stage.
We’ve added another ten tracks to the listings so we now feature a Top 50, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of our Argentina Correspondent Javier Pintos and his team of panellists who look after business in that part of the world. We’re grateful for their efforts in helping to promote so many of the best courses within a very proud golfing region.
The big news is that we have a new No.1. After two editions in the top spot, the Blanca & Colorada course at Olivos Golf Club in Pablo Nogués drops one place to make way for the Red course at the Jockey Club in San Isidro, which was designed by Alister MacKenzie back in the mid-1930s. It was described in volume 2 of The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses as “no match for MacKenzie’s best, but the mounding around some of the greens has to be seen to be believed.”
Jockey Club Red course
Well-travelled golfer Bob McCoy (The Odyssey) told us at the end of last year that “all the flat land for the fairways was dug up to create swales and hollows (with) the excess soil used to create humps and bumps in the fairways and around the greens”. Prolific reviewer Peter Wood posted the following last month: “The Jockey Club is not a striking course visually, but if you think your way around you will enjoy yourself with Dr MacKenzie’s wonderful strategic design.”
There’s not much movement near the top of the standings until we chance upon the highest new entry, the 18-hole layout at El Terrón Golf Club which is situated a short 15-minute drive from Córdoba airport. Opened at the end of 2019, it’s a Tom Weiskopf design that’s laid out within a 370-acre housing development, with holes arranged in two distinct returning loops of nine across a rolling landscape.
El Terrón Golf Club
Along with La Paz in Ascochinga, Córdoba in Villa Allende and Potrerillo de Larreta in Alta Gracia, the golf facility at El Terrón is now at the forefront of tourist golf attractions in the local area.
The biggest upward move in the upper half of the table is made by the Blue and White nines at Pilar Golf Club, where this layout improves its position by four places to reach #24 in the new listings. Designed by Ron Fream to a championship standard for its owner, the course has hosted the Abierto de Argentina championship three times in the new millennium and it also staged the first Latin America Amateur Championship (organized by the USGA, R&A and Augusta National) in 2015.
Pilar Golf Club
In the bottom half of the table, two courses advance three places.
The 18-hole layout at Golf Club Sierra de la Ventura (at #31) lies 100 kilometres northeast of Bahía Blanca and it dates back to 1935, when Pedro Churio (the professional at Ituzaingo Golf Club) designed an initial 9-hole track with the enthusiastic support of workers from the Southern Railroad Company. Sixteen years later, Luther Koonz was engaged to add another nine holes and his out-and-back layout, with several holes played across the Arroyo San Diego, is the one that’s still in play today.
Golf Club Sierra de la Ventura
The 18-hole layout at San Eliseo Golf and Country Club (at #33) sits an hour’s drive south of Buenos Aries city centre, with holes routed around a substantial residential development. Several interlinked lakes were fashioned during construction to provide material for sculpting fairway and greenside mounding on a very flat landscape, with a little of the surplus soil reserved for the island green on the par three 17th hole.
San Eliseo Golf and Country Club
Nine of the final fourteen slots at the foot of the new chart are occupied by new entries, led by Club Mar del Plata Los Acantilados at #37. The club was founded in 1907 but its current three 9-hole loops – Merlo, Laguna and Medio – date back to the late 1950s, when they were laid out by professionals Pedro Churio and Agustin Posse. The Merlo and Laguna nines are regarded as the premier 18-hole set-up, combining to form the Colorada course.