Best in Every Country
The best golf courses in Spain
Real Club de Golf Las Brisas, ranked eighth on our list of the Best Courses in Spain, has a distinctly Californian vibe and was renovated recently by Kyle Phillips.
Julian Barray
The golf on the Iberian Peninsula doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Portugal golf might have the current buzz among European golf destinations, but that’s because most Spanish golf courses have been established and have had strong reputation already been established.
Majestic golf developments with luxurious resort accommodations can be found on some of the most beautiful parts of Spain. That’s why a Spanish golf trip is ultra flexible—for the couples trip that includes a lot of rest and relaxation, Spain is great. Or for a group of golfers who also enjoy soaking in some non-golf experiences, a trip to Spain offers that, too. It's easy to get from place to place, even if you're island-hopping.
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You likely know Valderrama from its spotlight on the international stage for the 1997 Ryder Cup, a recent LIV event and past championships, but Spanish golf is about so much more than that. Scroll down to begin appreciating Spanish golf to its fullest.
We urge you to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography, drone footage and expanded reviews. Plus, you can now leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … to make your case why your favorite should be ranked higher.
Editor's Note: Our Best Courses in Spain ranking is part of the rollout of the Best Courses in Every Country. Check back over the next few weeks for more of our rankings of the best golf around the world.
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Courtesy of the club
A few years before his death, five-time major champion Seve Ballesteros was asked to collaborate with Rees Jones on a golf course for the bank of Santander, on the opposite side of the bay where he grew up. Though Seve’s design career doesn’t get the attention of other legendary players, he did a dozen or so courses in and around the Mediterranean, and here he and Jones’ team transformed a former garbage dump into a natural-looking environment with beautiful flora and vegetation that has continued to mature over the past two decades.
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Eneko Santiago Saracho
Alcanada is an unexpected gem, situated on the northern coast of the island of Majorca. The course took nearly two decades to build once developer Hans-Peter Porsche acquired the land in the 1980s due to permitting constraints. American architect Robert Trent Jones II began planning the course in the 1990s and completed it in 2003. The first nine works into the island’s highlands with beautiful views of the mountains and Mediterranean Sea, eventually sneaking back down to the shore of Alcudia Bay at the 16th and 17th holes. The wind coming off the water is a constant, making precise iron play into the small greens a necessity.
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Another stellar modern Spanish design by American native turned Spanish resident Cabell Robinson, Las Colinas Golf and Country Club utilizes natural, rolling terrain through woodlands along the coastline south of Alicante. The amenities at the club include two stellar short-game areas, one of which was designed by Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez.
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La Finca, one of the country’s more unique courses, is a 2002 design by popular Spanish player and architect Pepe Gancedo. The holes are wide open with large fairways that switch back across an arid, desert-like section of Spain’s southeastern coast that’s reminiscent of Palm Springs golf. The shaping of the bunkers and greens pulls inspiration from all directions, from cubist art to Seth Raynor. There’s a Biarritz-inspired green, trees and bunkers in the center of fairways, a square putting surface pinched by a T-square bunker, waste areas, water features and even an island green.
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Perry Dye designed the New Course at San Roque Club with consultation with the legendary Seve Ballesteros. New management has taken over the New Course from San Roque Club, and the Spanish real estate company is planning significant renovations over the next year or so. The course hosted the Spanish Open in 2006.
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Formerly known as PGA Catalunya, Camiral Golf & Wellness is one of the northernmost golf clubs in Spain, located in the rural Catalunya region near the French border. The Tour course, opened ini 2005, is a more casual alternative to the tournament-ready Stadium course, shorter and more inviting, though care must be taken with the driver as the holes are cut through a rolling property of pine.
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Ross Kinnaird
As the story goes, famous Spanish architect Javier Arana took a stroll through a pine forest along the beach of El Saler in the 1960s and happened upon a perfect setting for golf—with natural dunes and rolling topography. He convinced the government to allow for the clearing of trees for the development of Parador de El Saler Golf Course. The course has become of the country’s most celebrated designs for the past half century—hosting a number of prestigious championships such as the Spanish Open and the Seve Trophy. Wide, rolling fairways and large, undulating greens—protected by nearly 100 bunkers, some of them blown out in appearance to match the natural setting along the Mediterranean Sea—are still the hallmark of Arana's gem.
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Julian Barray
8. Real Club de Golf Las Brisas
Marbella, Malaga, Spain
Real Las Brisas is another course located in the beautiful, golf rich Andalusian region of southern Spain. Like its cousins Valderrama and Sotogrande 30 miles south, Las Brisas was built by Robert Trent Jones in the late 1960s, shortly after he completed Sotogrande. For American golfers, the vibe is southern California, perhaps Carlsbad to be specific, with flattish holes strung through a wide, narrow property of oaks, palms, olive and cork trees just a mile from the Mediterranean Sea under the guise of mountains. Jones used a canal ingeniously throughout the design, running the water alongside holes and in front of greens demanding brave aerial attacks. Kyle Phillips remodeled the course in 2014 and 2015, reviving Trent Jones’ jagged bunkers and runway tees, and created several new holes on the second nine including the sixth, seventh and eighth to better utilize the limited space and improve flow.
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Carved into the hillside of Spain’s Costa del Sol with views of the Mediterranean Sea, La Reserva is one of the newer courses in the golf-rich Sotogrande region, with Valderrama right down the street. Similar to Finca Corestín, also designed by Cabell Robinson, La Reserva features wide, sweeping fairways with challenging, risk-reward holes.
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Located about 10 miles northwest of Barcelona, Real El Prat has two 18-hole courses in our top 15 in Spain, both designed by the firm of Greg Norman, with the Pink Course coming in highest at No. 6. Most of the Pink plays in heavily wooded uplands above the clubhouse with narrow fairways bordered by corridors of trees, with most of the holes moving back and forth in opposite directions. As is typical with Norman designs, the bunkering references Australia with thick-cut lips and ornamental capes and bays, and the greens are bordered by short-grass runoffs. Standout holes include the par-3 sixth with a sharply elevated green rising out of a field of field of sand, and holes 10 through 12 that circle open space. The 12th is particularly intriguing, a short par 4 that offers players a variety of attack strategies ranging from safe irons off the tee to more risky drives that must navigate 10 bunkers strung between the tee and green.
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Steve Carr
The upscale Finca Corestín, a luxurious resort in Southern Spain laid out over 500 acres on a former farm estate, is as upscale as it gets, boasting stunning villas with terracotta-tiled roofs that blend into the Andalucian landscape. Cabell Robinson, an American architect who’s now based in Spain and has worked all over the world, designed this thrilling course with severely sloping fairways to help boost drives. Finca Corestín, with some great risk/reward holes, is a perfect match-play venue—it hosted the 2023 Solheim Cup and the Volvo Match Play for a number of years soon after the course opened.
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Compared to the United Kingdom, golf in Spain is a recent phenomenon. Therefore the “old” moniker of the Old Course at San Roque Club is relative: it opened in the early 1990s. It does, however, predate the club’s New Course (ranked 11th), which came over a decade later. San Roque sits just south of the country’s two most prominent layouts, Valderrama and Sotogrande, and shares a similar landscape of gentle topography, mountain views and stylish, state of the art agronomy. The graceful design features numerous doglegs, minimal bunkering and roomy greens.
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Octavio Passos
Rebranded as the previous PGA Catalunya course, the Stadium course at Camiral has hosted a European Tour event on multiple occasions, most recently the Catalunya Championship in 2022, won by Spaniard Adri Arnaus. The course features elevated tees with numerous downhill tee shots and doglegs framed by fir trees and heather. Just a few year ago, the course underwent a major renovation in an effort of sustainability while also moving around a few holes.
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Sotogrande, located just off the Mediterranean Sea, was the first course Robert Trent Jones built in Europe and shares many of the same ingredients that distinguish Valderrama (No. 29), the higher ranked of RTJ’s two Spanish gems. In fact, Valderrama, located just two miles higher into the foothills of Cadiz, was originally the second course for Sotogrande members and residents before being acquired by a separate group of investors. The design is American mid-century, defined by tight holes that dogleg through corridors of twisted cork trees and large greens pinched in front by bunkers. The course was the first on the continent to use American 419 Bermuda in the fairways, and water hazards come into play on five of the last seven holes, including the photogenic par 3s at 13 and 17.
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Courtesy of Valderrama
Best known as the site of the 1997 Ryder Cup, won by Europe in a squeaker, Valderrama was a favorite design of the late architect Robert Trent Jones. His tight, twisting fairways, pinched at every turn by squat olive trees, led to surprisingly small putting surfaces protected by his trademark splashy bunkers. Valderrama contains one of the more controversial holes in golf: The par-5 17th guarded by water in front, which European captain Seve Ballesteros toughened for that Ryder Cup. It influenced the outcome then, and was a game changer again in 2017, when Sergio Garcia won his own foundation's tournament, the European Tour's Andalucia Valderrama Classic. His birdie on 17 in the final round was the margin of victory.
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