Emporda Golf in Costa Brava has two excellent and contrasting 18-hole courses, named Links and Forest. The on-site hotel has undergone a refurbishment which cost €21m. Of this nearly €7m was spent on the Links course and involved work to all the bunkers. That’s a lot of money, but then there is a lot of bunkering.
A rule of thumb is that any course calling itself a links is not one. Such is the case here. Mounds of earth to ape a links have been built, but these do not flow or have the ripple effect characteristic of linksland.
The fairways are flat, with none of the awkward stances you can get on many links, and the bunkers are often flat – so none of the steep or pot bunkers typical of a links either. But it is an imaginative transformation of a flat, open piece of land.
Also, unlike with a links, you cannot manufacture shots so easily here: there is a mix of target golf and risk-and-reward. This is often because water hazards have been sploshed around the design with enthusiasm by architect Robert von Haage.
View from the balcony of my room at Terraverda Golf Hotel looking over the 1st tee on the Forest towards the 9th green on the Links course
(Image credit: Roderick Easdale )
The 9th is probably the most attractive hole with the distant backdrop to the moated green one of mountains and castle. The green is 170ft deep and in the shape of a cartoon depiction of a dog’s bone.
On the par-3 6th the putting surface is angled to the tee and behind a sprawling bunker. It is also jolly wide – well in my case actually miserably wide as I was on in one and down in five. An even better, or worse, chance to four putt is the 18th as that has a massive double green with the 18th on the Forest.
The 18th greens at Emporda Golf
(Image credit: Gerrit Kleinfeld)
The 428-yard 7th has a green 170ft deep. The par-3 11th is to an angled green 155ft from front to back with the tee shot over the corner of a lake.
The slightly shorter Forest, also the work of von Haage, might seem to be the secondary course at Emporda Golf as Links was prioritised for…
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