Patricia Zimmerman : “You leave Los Naranjos with the feeling of wanting to play again to avoid the mistakes you made and with a really good lasting impression: plus the maintenance is excellent.”
Golf lover, almost an addict, Patricia Zimmerman loves this sport as it always gives you the opportunity to improve. For her, each round is a beautiful challenge she can take on in her spare time. Working as a professional in finance, Patricia shows the same meticulousness and talent on the green, fighting right up to the last putt. She is competitive but at the same time charming. Sharing a round of golf with her really is a great experience. As she has played on the best courses around the World, her rating of Los Naranjos is much valued. Being one of the best amateurs on the Costa del Sol has made her the ideal person to start a series of articles in which the golf course venue of the Costa del Sol Andalucía Open 2021 will be shown from different perspectives.
Before facing each other at the tee off, we asked Patricia if she could talk us about the course and her game plan:
“Los Naranjos GC is a course with very wide fairways so you don’t get stressed when you miss them. It is possible to divide the course in two different parts since the first 9 holes are so different from the rest, making them look like two different courses. The first 9 are very challenging and the course is characterized by uneven terrain, large and long bunkers with the presence of several water obstacles. You have to really concentrate and make accurate shots if you want to obtain a good result. Hole number 5 is really hard and to get a par there is a real result and you can go home happy “, as explained by Patricia, who at the moment is playing with a handicap of 13, but she reached 11 at her best.
Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Punta Espada and Mayacoba are some of the courses she has enjoyed. She has fond memories of Teeth of the Dog where she obtained a result of 8 over par. In Spain one of her favourites is Pedreña, especially because of the legacy that Seve left there. On the Costa del Sol her preferred courses are Sotogrande and Los Naranjos. She talks about this while walking from hole to hole, at a gentle pace but without losing focus on the game:
“The course is very diverse with a wide variety of different holes, some are short, others are long: they can have doglegs and some are blind holes. Every one of them presents a challenge and you can’t lose your concentration otherwise you are done.”
Once we finished the game at Los Naranjos, her opinion is even more important: “you leave with the feeling of wanting to play again in order to avoid the mistakes you made and with a really good lasting impression: plus the maintenance is excellent. The 18th hole is the perfect culmination of the course with the clubhouse in the background: it is difficult image to forget. I think they have kept the philosophy of the designer:” hard par, easy bogey” since it is truly hard to obtain pars, the holes are long and challenging.The approach to some of the greens is long and challenging, making it hard to put the ball close to the hole. You have to play well, and today wasn’t the case, but we really enjoyed it.”