[Tom_Doak]

David:


Glad to hear you enjoyed the course.  I did, also, when I visited a few years back ... when Alfonso was kind enough to drive me down from Madrid.


The one feature of the course that sticks out in my mind are the number of greens which are very long back to front and divided left and right by a tier, providing two very narrow targets.  Only a very, very good player would design something like that, and Arana of course was once the Spanish Amateur champion.  Neguri, in the Basque country, has a few similar greens so that must be part of Arana's style.

[David Davis]

David:


Glad to hear you enjoyed the course.  I did, also, when I visited a few years back ... when Alfonso was kind enough to drive me down from Madrid.


The one feature of the course that sticks out in my mind are the number of greens which are very long back to front and divided left and right by a tier, providing two very narrow targets.  Only a very, very good player would design something like that, and Arana of course was once the Spanish Amateur champion.  Neguri, in the Basque country, has a few similar greens so that must be part of Arana's style.

Tom, that's very interesting. I'm trying to think of examples of what you mean. Would that be like the green on the short par 4, 8th hole. It seemed long, though not too narrow and I remember the approach being really tough as the ridge ran diagonally through the hole from right to left and was fairly steep. The pin was back right and I was unable to get my approach up there as the fairway comes in from the right side. (And I was even on the far left of the fairway.)

[Frank Pont]

David,

interesting to hear the course was soft, when I was there for the Spanish Open the greens were so firm the players had great difficulty getting balls close to the pins.....

I also love El Saler, its one of my favorite courses in Europe, mostly because its so understated. That to a large extent is due to Arana.

I'm a lucky man to be working with three other Arana courses, and none of them are flashy, but they all have lots of very good subtle elements

[Alfonso Erhardt]

The left-right tier does happen at other Arana courses, but not with the same intensity as it does in El Saler. Together with front-to-back sloping greens it is one of Arana's trademarks.


As for the maintenance, El Saler is always unpredictable

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