Real Club Valderrama

Robert Trent Jones built the course in 1974 as Sotogrande New, a few miles up the coast from the Strait of Gibraltar. It was renamed Las Aves in 1981, and in 1984 Jaime Ortiz-Patiño bought it, had Jones redesign and extend it, and called it Valderrama. By 1999 Golf World rated it the best course in mainland Europe.

It held the Volvo Masters, the European Tour's season finale, from 1988 to 2008, and in 1997 the first Ryder Cup ever played outside the United States and Britain. Two World Golf Championships followed in 1999 and 2000, and the Andalucía Masters is played here now. The course is 6,390 metres (about 6,990 yards), par 71, threaded between cork oaks that hang over the fairways; the fourth, La Cascada, is a par five with a waterfall pond beside a two-tier green.