O F T E N I M I TAT E D , N E V E R B E T T E R E D . Issue 707
10 June 2011 - 16 June 2011
www.canarianweekly.com
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Tee for Tenerife! Europe’s top ladies are promoting Island as a magnet for golfers A HUGE bid to promote Tenerife as a golfers’ paradise is being launched this week - by Europe’s leading female stars, who have an unusual agenda! They are introducing a new aspect to tournament play via the Tenerife Ladies Match Play event. This newcomer to the Ladies European Tour professional calendar tees off at Golf Las Americas today (Friday), following yesterday’s Pro-Am event there. The format is fundamentally match play, in which each hole is a separate competition. The player with the fewest strokes on an individual hole wins it, and so the one who wins most holes takes the match. In stroke play, the traditional style of golf, players accumulate strokes over the 18 holes. The golfer with the fewest strokes at the completion of the round wins. The idea of this tournament, which finishes on Sunday, is to highlight the Island’s excellence for golfers and courses, and also its ability to host major sporting events That is why it is actually being sponsored jointly by Tenerife Tourism and the Canary Islands Government, with back-up from various other sponsors around the Island. It has received official support from the Royal Spanish Golf Federation and the Canary Islands Golf Federation, as well. Tenerife Tourism Minister José Manuel Bermúdez said at the official opening yesterday (Thursday): “This tournament is part of our objectives towards promoting tourism here, and the sector has been responding positively all year.
Pic: Tenerife Cabildo - Tenerife 2010 Champion Trish Johnson in action.
He stressed the “enormous importance” of the event in the Canary Islands’ tourism strategy in general, and in Tenerife in particular, especially with the huge media coverage, “worth around 25 million euros in terms of the economic impact”. Joan Piferrer, Manager of
Golf Las Americas, added: “We are very proud to host this tournament. We have all worked hard to present the golf course at its best.” This will not be the first international gathering of golf stars in Tenerife because one leg of the men’s European PGA Tour
was staged at the newlybuilt Amarilla Golf course in 1990. Curiously, the Tour has never returned to Tenerife, despite the numerous, upmarket courses which have since sprung up on the Island. But the Ladies Tenerife
Open has been held here as part of their European tour for the past nine years, and is now followed by the current, new-format event. The first Ladies European Tour event in Tenerife, held at Golf del Sur in 2002, was won by Spain’s Raquel Carriedo-Tomas.
It moved on to the Seve Ballesteros-designed course in Buenavista, in the northwest, and then returned to the south, at Costa Adeje (three times), Golf del Sur again and the newly-opened Abama course in 2006. Brits Rebecca Hudson and Continued on page 4.