COURSES
Camiral – Stadium Course (No 14 in Continental Europe)
Venue for the 2031 Ryder Cup
The second best ranked course in Continental Europe that we have toured to behind Monte Rei which we played in 2023.
The Stadium course is the culmination of more than a decade of planning and design by the European Tour. They wanted to build their own Players Championship course to rival the PGA Tour’s Sawgrass course. It has to be said that it was a decade well spent. The PGA is so good that within months of opening, it hosted the 1999 Gene Sarazen World Open and the Spanish Open in 2000. The Spanish Open returned to the Stadium course in 2009 (won by Thomas Levet) and 2014 when veteran Miguel Angel Jiménez extended his own record as the oldest winner in European Tour history winning a three-man play-off.
Club Golfe d’aro (No 94 in Spain)
The D’Aro course at Mas Nou is perched 300 metres above sea level in the Les Gavarres Mountains. From this vantage point there are panoramic views of the Costa Brava.
“The views from D’Aro are stunning as it sits right on the top of a mountain. It has varying holes that play alongside the edge of this as well as two holes which play directly up and down the side. I played here four years ago and love it so much I am planning on going back next year to that region just because of that course (and maybe PGA Catalunya too). I would recommend this for anyone they would not be disappointed.”
Designed by Ramon Espinosa and opened in 1992, the course at Golf Club D’Aro sits in the Gavarres Mountains, 300 metres above the tourist resort of Platja d’Aro, overlooking the Costa Brava coastline in the northeastern corner of Spain.
Encircled by a mix of pine, cork oak and olive trees, the course is routed along and over some deep ravines where anything straying from the fairway is lost forever – little wonder the club have a local rule allowing such hazards to be considered as lateral water, improving the playability of the course for higher handicapped players.
D’Aro has a par of 72 and it can play as long as 6,800 yards from the back markers, with two large irrigation lakes coming into play at a couple of holes on the card.
Distance is not the main obstacle to scoring well on this spectacular and challenging course though – plot your way round to have any hope of playing just the one sleeve of balls!
