One marvels at the accomplishments of Alfonso Erhardt and his new book The Golf Courses of Javier Arana. Consider that this tome details the works (albeit, excellent) of an obscure golf course architect who only worked in a country where golf ranks well below bullfighting, soccer, and basketball et al. in popularity. Three years (!) of exhaustive research and writing is what it took to properly tell the story. Yet, publishing such a handsome book in a country where the economy is languid at best (The New York Times reported two weeks ago that the sacred siesta is even now under siege
) is far from easy! No publisher would go out money to do it as the market is too small. So, Alfonso bit the bullet and paid for 2,000 books to be produced – 1500 in Spanish and the remainder in English. In view of the quality of Alfonso’s photos and writing, the editor shrewdly pushed for a high quality production and Alfonso found a publisher that specialized in high end art books.
What emerged was an opulent coffee table volume. Its 300 pages of discovery were greeted with praise when it debuted in early January. Not surprisingly, Mark Rowlinson was all over it from the get-go and started this thread at the time:
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,57588.0.htmlThe aim of such a book is to enable the reader to gain an appreciation for both the man and his work. Alfonso succeeded wonderfully by personalizing this gentleman of whom so little was previously known. Arana was both a stylish player and a dapper gentleman – the photo of him on page 72 with his beret is a classic! Limber as can be, his swing stood up well over time and for a long while before the Spanish Civil War, he was Spain’s finest golfer. He also became the head official of the Spanish Golf Federation and became a natural choice when it came time to build golf courses. He toured the spectacular cliff site of Neguri with Harry Colt in the 1920s but the 1929 stock market crash meant that Arana didn’t get to build the course until … 1960! Born in 1905, Arana rubbed elbows with some of the Golden Age greats like Colt and later formed a (brief) partnership with Tom Simpson. Similar to Robert Trent Jones Sr., this is a guy whose roots were with the Golden Age architects but whose own work didn’t really materialize until after WWII.
El Saler is his most famous design and the course majestically embraces its Mediterranean setting. Just look at Alfonso’s El Saler photos – if they don’t make you itch to play golf, nothing will. It was likely the best site he ever had but Spain’s beautiful people and culture are matched by diverse environments that range from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and that encompass both mountains (Pyrenees) and desert (Tabernas). Arana, who built 10 courses, seemed to understand the challenges of all these ecosystems (he was a star with turf grass) and succeeded wherever he worked.
In terms of Arana’s golf design attributes, Alfonso writes, “Despite the very sparse bunkering, his golf courses have shown a very good resistance to scoring due to intelligent use of certain features: recurrence of dog-legs, long par 3s, fallaway and/or tiered greens and as Tom Doak highlighted after visiting Neguri, lack of visual references to aid better players in getting around.” Importantly, Alfonso also points out, ‘All of Arana’s courses are highly enjoyable by the average player, but through intelligent placement of design elements, they are challenging for better players without need for many of the more artificial hazards to add interest to his designs.’
If you enjoy searching for books on golf courses/architecture, you can vouch for the fact that something of this magnitude has never been done in Spain. Nothing even comes close and that makes The Golf Courses of Javier Arana ground breaking stuff. Arana has been done proud – and it’s about time that his contributions to golf across the 20thcentury are recognized. You can learn more and order the book atwww.javierarana.com. Meanwhile, a big time shout out is due Alfonso – few of us ever come close to accomplishing anything so substantive/enduring.
Be warned though: the real expense of this book is the realization that a trip to Spain is now mandatory
and much more rewarding from a golf perspective than most people realize.
Best,