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OK, you're thinking about the perfect golfing holiday in the summer time, somewhere with a reliable climate that's not too hot, preferably with sea breezes and views of the ocean. A place where the living is easy and the golf courses are not over-populated.
Having reflected upon the required ingredients, your list of potential destinations might include Hawaii, Bermuda, California and perhaps Cape Cod, if the beach is a necessary part of the equation.
To that limited roll call of hedonistic hide-aways you should consider adding the Spanish island of Tenerife. And if the suggestion appears incongruous well, don’t simply take my word for it.
“It’s millionaire’s golf from May to September,” said an expatriate Dubliner, a resident of Tenerife for 14 years and one who knows his onions apropos golf and most of the other pleasures of life.
"The courses are first class and sparsely populated in the summer time, the normal green fees are halved, the climate is idyllic. Add the other good things we have here and holidays simply don’t come much better.” It was a ringing recommendation.
OK, scenically Tenerife is not Hawaii or Bermuda. More like Arizona, perhaps, starkly appealing for the most part and not at all prepossessing visually. It’s a volcanic island – Mount Teide dominates most views – and, the hilly northern quarter aside, the countryside generally is the colour of sand stone, the vegetation sparse because of limited and poor quality top soil.
But the island is not without a certain charm, the people are gracious (churlish policemen excepted), the cuisine eclectic and appealing and the hotels, like the many attractions, of a high standard.
Similarly the golf. For a decade or so there were only two resort courses and, as usual in such a scenario, the lack of choice was not conducive to popularity or of great benefit to the economy.
Now there are five courses within a 10-mile drive (the sixth and oldest, a members’ club, is in the north) and four are in the pipeline, either under construction or in final planning, with a comparable growth in agreeable accommodation. That, though, is only part of the story.
Like many resort areas within reach of Europe -- Tenerife (population 700,000) is one of the Canary Islands group that is four hours due south of London Gatwick and 170 miles west of Southern Morocco – the island is big news among Northern European golfers seeking respite from their bone-chilling winters (46,000 visiting golfers played 231,000 rounds there last year) and although he golf is well managed, the courses tend to be a touch crowded and somewhat frenetic. Not at all what the doctor ordered.
Summer time golf? It hadn’t crossed my mind. My three visits had all been in winter and I presumed, misguidedly, that summer would be blood-boiling time and too hot.
Not so, I learned recently. The year-round average is 23C and there’s not a huge difference between the temperatures in February and those of July or August.
If it sounds too good to be true there is an explanation. This idyllic scenario is due to a combination of cooling trade winds and the Gulf Stream.
Aside from the occasional Scirroco, a hot and muscular wind from Africa which announces itself three or four times a year and takes four days to run its course, the breeze is a cooling one from mid-Atlantic. It’s just strong enough to make golf interesting and takes the heat out of the sun on the days that bring the occasional scorcher.
They say the thermometer struggles to top 85F even in July and mostly it hovers around 80F (25C), as I discovered during my most recent visit in February.
So debilitating summer heat a la Florida is unknown and, equally importantly, the relative humidity that plagues most such summer destinations is virtually zero, thanks to the trade winds.
And because of the general misconception regarding the climate, golf course traffic in summer is about 25 per cent of that in winter, green fees are halved and you’ll skip around in less than four hours. Heck, you could play 36 holes a day!
An equally appealing aspect of all this is that it solves a perennial problem faced by golfers with families. They could select Tenerife for the summer holidays safe in the knowledge that the brood will have a ball on the beach while they indulge in guilt-free, low cost golf.
In the parlance of another era, this is known as “having your cake and eating it.” Welcome to golf in paradise.
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