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Recommend golf courses on the Costa del Sol

A wide variety of people play golf. I am very aware that the golf courses I like may not be the courses you like. Also your location on the Costa del Sol means you might want to look at courses nearer to you first. So please take the recommendations below with a suitable degree of care.

Note: You may want to print off some of our pdfs if you want to prepare a list of courses you plan to play.

"We are bunch of good golfers looking to play really top courses. Prepared to pay for that." The best-known premier courses at the Western end of the Costa del Sol are Valderrama, San Roque, La Reserva, Sotogrande and Finca Cortesin. Further East around Marbella, Alferini, Guadalmina South, Aloha and Las Brisas are also very fine courses with price tags to match. If you are planning a golf tour playing a lot of these courses in quite a short period of time, it is better if you organise this through a specialist travel agent. They know those courses and how to get tee times. They can also organise other things like transport, accommodation etc. All this is going to cost you fairly serious money - €300+ per person per day.

"We are average golfers (15-25 handicap) looking for decent mid-ranking golf courses with reasonable challenge but not too tough or expensive." My profile exactly. My first choice courses are (from West to East) Almenara, La Cañada, Doña Julia, Valle Romano, Marbella Club, Alferini, Los Naranjos, Santa Maria and La Cala America. My second choice courses (also from West to East) are Alcadeisa Links, Rio Real, Santa Clara, La Cala Europa, Mijas Los Lagos and El Chaparral. Confirm prices before you visit all these courses (they have mix of prices, mostly mid-priced but some higher priced). Of course if you are prepared to pay more money for your rounds of golf, then the more expensive courses mentioned in the section above "..play really top courses.." are very high quality as well.

"We are beginner golfers with no handicap or high handicap looking for easy courses. Ideally not very expensive courses." First you might consider 9-hole courses. Beyond that El Paraiso, Atalaya Old, Guadalmina North, Miraflores and Santana are quite easy. You could also try Estepona and La Duquesa. Those are certainly cheap, although not particularly easy. If you can play golf in the Málaga area, then both Parador de Málaga and Guadalhorce are simple courses. Confirm prices before you visit all these courses (not all of them are low-price).

"We are particularly looking for courses we can walk." My definition of a "nice walk" and yours may be very different. However I do think some courses are relatively flat and/or I have seen quite a lot of golfers walking them. These are (in order from West to East) San Roque Old, Alcadeisa Links, Alcadeisa Heathland, Sotogrande, Estepona, Villa Padierna Flamingos, El Paraiso, Atalaya Old, Guadalmina South, Guadalmina North, La Quinta, Aloha, Rio Real, Santa Clara, Santana, Mijas Los Lagos, Mijas Los Olivos, Lauro, Torrequebrada, Guadalhorce and Parador de Malaga. This list contains courses at all price levels. You should really confirm with each club what their policy is regarding players walking their course. In particular what their view is if you play slowly and can not get around the course in a reasonable time of 4 to 4.5 hours.