A trip to Ecuador - A golf course architect reminisces

By SImon Gidman, EIGCA Senior Member and past president

“I hate you Dad” came the response after my refusal to let my daughter accompany me on my recent trip to Ecuador. A trip that lasted for four weeks, saw me visit six of the seven courses in Ecuador, visit hat shops, take trips up the Andes mountains, bathe in warm water springs and the Pacific, and meet some marvellous people on the way.

The initial enquiry came via the EIGCA – worth the membership fee alone – and was from the president of the Los Cerros GC, Snr Esteban Serrano. The golf club, set up in 1992, is a fairly recent addition to golf in Ecuador and was created as an alternative to the country club system that typifies much of golf in Ecuador. Many of the original membership had been members of the nearby Quito Tenis y Golf Club, which as the name suggests, is a lot more than merely golf and the new club at Los Cerros was keen to develop a facility that concentrated solely on golf. The course had been designed to cater for all types of golfer and to do this the architect built large greens with little contouring and with bunkering often set some distance from the putting surface. Nice n’easy targets but slightly lacking in challenge and, so after 17 years, the club felt it was time to move on and to create greens with far greater difficulty and interest.

My original agreement with the Los Cerros GC allowed for a five day visit to the club with a bit of sightseeing at either end of my stay. However, as I found out later, countries like Ecuador, who feel themselves slightly in the backwater of golf, were more than happy when I asked if I could extend my trip to visit other clubs in their country, and the Ecuadorian Golf Federation set about organising visits for me to any club that thought I could help. And so a short weeks’ excursion mushroomed into four weeks with yours truly flying all over the country, from Quito to the southern Andes in Cuenca, and then to the port town of Guayaquil and then back to Quito.

My first stop took in the courses in Quito, the Los Cerros GC, the Quito Tenis y Golf Club and the Arrayanes Country Club. Quito itself is some 9000 feet above sea level which compares with the highest point in Britain, Ben Nevis at only 4410 feet, so there was some acclimatising to do. I was told to take aspirin to offset the effects of a headache, (your brain is supposed to get larger in high altitude, unfortunately not so in my case!), eat lightly and beware of general sickness. I expected difficulty breathing but not to the extent that I found it – wow!

Los Cerros, like all bar one course in Ecuador, is private and exclusive and like most private courses you have to be fairly rich to join them. The financial structure of these courses is all fairly similar. Most charge a family entrance fee (shareholding) to join the club of some $10 -20,000 US dollars (one charges as much as $80,000 ), then a fixed fee of around $250 – 300 per month to play golf and at some clubs a further sum behind the bar.

Some of the facilities at these golf clubs are truly amazing. The Quito Tenis y Golf Club, for example, supports 16 outdoor tennis courts, 6 indoor courts, 6 squash courts, 3 equestrian centres, 4 football pitches, gymnasiums of all kinds, health centres, ladies and gents hairdressing salons; it has 15 food outlets, and even it’s own bakery. At the weekend it has two fully manned ambulances for its membership! Furthermore they employ over 500 staff. It’s a small village in its own right.

Whilst this is an exception, all the private clubs, apart from Los Cerros GC, encourage other sports and golf is by no means the most important leisure activity. Come the holidays the clubs are full of children who use the club’s facilities each and every day. Security around these clubs is present but not overpowering. My only brush with security was with one of the club presidents who had a bomb and bullet proof car. Anybody ever tried closing a bullet proof car door?

Four of the six courses I visited were designed by the Colombian architect, J Villegas, sadly recently deceased. Without exception he created fine layouts, exploring some beautiful mountainous countryside, perhaps the highlight being the 17th hole at Los Cerros with the view of Mt. Cotopaxi behind the green. Or perhaps it is the par 5 15th at Arrayanes, playing over a huge ravine, crossed by a 100 metre bridge.

The point about golf in Ecuador is that almost everywhere you play the game, you play against the backdrop of fantastic and dramatic scenery. You eventually take the Andes for granted. How crazy is that?

One of the amazing features of life in Quito is the incredibly varied weather. Within a twenty mile drive you have the beautiful Los Cerros golf course which is surrounded by mountains and where it seems to rain almost everyday (it doesn’t of course) and the Arrayanes Country Club where they have barely 20 days of rain throughout the year. One is constantly trying to move water off the site, the other desperately trying to conserve all its water resources.

Arrayanes is perhaps a more typical modern golf club, a mix of leisure and housing, and what housing it is too – very modern and with very imaginative design. The design of the clubhouse too is very contemporary and the colours are all vibrant and exciting. No fear of bright blues and oranges here!

From Quito, south to Cuenca and the southern Andes. Cuenca is the capital of the Azuay province, a charming Spanish style city with seemingly more churches than hotels. It is also the home of the Panama hat (having taken over from Montecristi) and by good luck the Golf Director of the club was a cousin of the owner of the company. Of course I visited the company and of course I bought myself a smart traditional Panama hat. It’s a beauty!

The golf course is perhaps the most simple of all the courses in Ecuador, not built by Villegas this time but by locals back in 1963. It is only 9 holes but because of the family base of the club they are producing some very fine young golfers. There is one golfer, Juan Hererra who is only 17, has played the game for only 4 or 5 years and is already off scratch. Watch out for him.

And finally from Cuenca down to the coast and visits to the La Costa GC and the Guayaquil Golf & CC, known simply and reverentially as the “Country Club”. It is the country’s oldest club with perhaps the most unique greens in Ecuador. They are mostly small and all are perched well above their surrounds in a very artificial way. Miss the green and the ball can bounce on forever.

It was here at the “Country Club” that I first came across an Iguana. This rather ugly looking reptile fell out of a tree near to me, waddled across the grass to a tee, did a bit of sunbathing and then scrambled back up the same tree as I tried to take a photo of it.

La Costa, on the other hand, is a very modern layout with many interesting water features. It is the longest course in Ecuador (when altitude is taken into account) and has been laid out with future housing in mind. Whilst this has yet to materialize, when it does I’m sure it will make one of the great housing /golf developments of its kind in South America.

Golf in Ecuador remains very much for the well off and generally speaking is only part of a much larger leisure development. As such it has to take its turn where funding for future projects are concerned. I got the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that most of the clubs, wished that their clubhouses, despite supporting other sports, were smaller and more economically viable. So many restaurant areas were not being used and large cavernous receptions looked splendid but empty. Now where have I heard that before?

I shall certainly miss Ecuador – the countryside and the people; it was great fun.

By the way my daughter still hasn’t forgiven me!

This article originally appeared in Golf Course Architecture October 2009. Click here for further information.