Golf4uAlicante Blog

 We  have now lived in sunny Spain since  2008 and entered my first golf competition in over 13 years. In Scotland I used to take part in many competitions and would like to share with you my experiences in Spain.

Golf in Spain in many ways is similar to back home in Scotland with the plus factor of the weather, there are many fantastic championship golf courses to choose from in the Costa Blanca region of Spain.
The Golf industry attracts millions of Euros to Spain and the golf courses are of a very high standard . What more could a golfer wish:-to play in warm and sunny weather on championship courses is a delight that brings more golfers back time and time again to the Costa Blanca.

A couple of examples of the main differences between golf in Spain and golf back in the UK.
Registering your handicap:- The first thing that springs to mind is that if you have a handicap from back in the UK you must register it here in Spain with the Spanish Golf Federation and pay 72 Euro per year to be able to play in any competition. This also covers you for the year from January to December for your Spanish Golf federation Insurance for any golf course in Spain and you are given a members id number which you must give every time you enter a competition,(This shows your name and your exact h/c).
If you choose not to register then you must pay between 1.5 Euro and 3 Euro per round plus your green fee every time you want to play a game of golf so it can be costly unless you book your green fees with a company like www.golf4ualicante.com.

 The second thing that comes to mind about Spain is the amount of golf societies that there are, just about every pub has one ,unlike the UK and is not at all common in Scotland.
This golfer is not allowed to play in competition golf as they do not have a recognised handicap and are not registered with the Spanish Federation-sorry,I meant to say yes a golf society golfer can play in a competition but cannot win any prizes or qualify for the next round of the competition.
( Golf societies only play Stableford golf over here in Spain, so its very difficult to give any player a true h/c).

So,if you are thinking of moving over to Spain for good then take into consideration the following about joining a golf society or golf club here:-
Joining a golf club over here in Spain can be costly, on average about 2,500 Euro per person per year and then you still pay a small fee every round you play
Secondly if you wish to play in competition then a golf society may not be for you either. However if you are looking to play a more relaxed type of golf and to make many new friends then you should go ahead and join the local pub golfing society.

Now back to the first competition I entered over here in Spain, it was called the Ballantine’s Blue Golf Challenge by MURCIAMIGA.
The rules to enter this competition were simple, you had to be a member of the Spanish Golf Federation and play in a minimum of two qualifying rounds out of 19 different venues around the two areas.
(If you do not qualify with in the first two rounds you may enter and play in any of the other 19 venues on the set dates at a cost of 55 Euro per round).

My choice was to play my first qualifying round at a great golf course called Lo Romero in the Murcia region, it was a shotgun start so more or less every player would be back at the club house for the all important qualifying results.
The sections were as follows,
Ladies First section, 0 to 20.4,
Second section, 21 to 36.
Gents First section, 0 to 9.4,
Second section, 9.5 to 18.4,
Third section, 19 to 24.

Not wishing to go into too much detail about the final results but yours truly managed to qualify in first position with 39 points playing off a handicap of 2 and got cut by 0.4.
Second round played a course called Roda it is superb course all year round and scored 37 points and got cut by 0.2.

In the ladies section there was an ENGLISH lady called Rita Ann East who came in with 56 points and was supposed to have a handicap of 33 ?????, she was cut to a new handicap of 16 and was told that she would not qualify for the grand final, hear hear!!!!!.
To give you an idea how ridiculous this woman’s score of 56 was she would have had to have had an average of 3.1 points on all 18 holes what a joke!.
So you can see that the Spanish Golf Federation is good at spotting golfers claiming ridiculously high handicaps to gain better results then they act swiftly and cut h/c as they should.

Golf is a great game and as far as I know the fairest sport on our planet if all play to the rules. It does anger me when golfers blatantly try and cheat the system.
The main reason for all players having to play two qualifying round for the Ballantine’s Blue Golf Challenge is very simple it to weed out the the less than truthful golfers, as there is 50.000 Euro worth of prizes up for grabs.
The prize list includes Car’s, Brand-name watches, Sports equipment and much more.

The Grand Final of this competition is on the 23rd of October at an other great golf course called Hacienda Del Alamo, Designed by Dave Thomas and son and measures 7,400 yards from the white tee’s (Now that’s a Challenge on its own).

I hope this blog has been of interest to you and if you do have any questions please feel free to e-mail me at info@golf4ualicante.com