Nestling among the spreading cork oaks of southen Andalucía Europe's number one championship golf course prepares quietly for its next challenge. Valderrama after nine Volvo Masters, a Ryder Cup and a World Golf Championship has seen everything. The world's greatest players have been tested to their limits and have had to be at their shotmaking best to return good scores because this great course always exacts tribute. When the course does give something to the card it immediately presents a new difficulty so the golfer can never rest on his laurels.
Robert Trent Jones Sr. who designed the course as "Las Aves" and returned later to work with Jaime Ortíz Patiño turning his original canvas into a golfing masterpiece said, "I think Valderrama is a clasic championship golf course. It's like Augusta... in about as good condition as any golf course can get. The pros can't believe it. Going over Valderrama hole by hole, they're all geat holes... it's a great test of golf."
Trent Jones was especially proud of Valderrama's signature hole the par-5 fourth with its greenside waterfall and lake. "There isn't a hole in the world quite like it," he said. "Mr Patiño is just as pleased as I am with the ultimate finish.
It ranks among the world's top ten par-5s"
After Trent Jones's rebuilt the policy of change at Valderrama has continued with the seventeenth, a hole that somehow never quite seemed to belong, coming in for serious and prolongued attetion. Now with its fairway mounds flattened out, the spur of encroaching rough banished and the green and right hand swales made more forgiving the hole provides a stiff challenge and, under the right conditions, the thrill of "going for it," trying to reach the green across water on the second shot.
This year par has returner to 71 with the lengthening of the seventh hole which now becomes a par-5. The short third has also "grown", by twenty metres, the green and bunkers having been moved bodily forward while retaining their shape and angle with respect to the now more distant tee. New grasses, more drainage, improved irrigation, and all golf carts equipped with the latest GPS screens in colour, Valderrama continues to innovate and to keep ahead.

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