The Garzón Club, an Experience That Goes far Beyond Wine and Golf

You’re standing on the 12th tee at Garzón Tajamares Golf. It’s a 10,000-acre piece of property on the Uruguayan coast, not far from the village of Garzón and the beach town of Jose Ignacio. To get there, it took a 175-kilometer drive from Montevideo, and scene is phenomenal. Surrounding you are groves of olive, almond and chestnut trees, lush green grass in front of you. The course is also home to seven tajamares, Spanish, essentially, for lakes—specifically low, topographical areas that collect and store water from rain runoff. They are blue, and crystal clear. You encounter the first tajamar on the tee shot that must travel over this body of water, and the second shot has to carry another lake, as well—whether you’re going for the green in two or not. If you decide to play it safe, your third-shot approach to the green, has to—you guessed it—go over another lake, this tajamar described as “massive,� which does adequately describe a 35-acre water expanse. Tucked in the middle of the lake is the green—an island green—that both excites and tantalizes you. You’ve never seen anything like this hole, and that’s the idea. Whether you bogey, birdied or did something else, it hardly matters since the scenery is simply breathtaking. That hasn’t changed since the course opened. How it’s presented to golfers has. In 2008, a decision was made to transform the 18 holes into a championship golf course. For this task, the club decided to hire Latin American golf legend Angel Cabrera, a three-time PGA TOUR winner who at the time was one of the world’s best players, with wins at the Masters and the U.S. Open on his resume. As a designer, Cabrera toured the property and decided he didn’t want to change the look of the course, but he did want it to more subtly fit the style of play he preferred. That meant changing some tee boxes, moving bunkers so they added challenge to the course and lengthening a hole, changing a par-3 and turning it into a drivable par-4. After the club and Cabrera finished re-designing it into a championship golf course, the other big change came when Garzón Tajamares Golf secured an affiliation with the PGA TOUR. “The main idea of the golf course and its relationship with the PGA TOUR is that we offer unique experiences to our members and their guests,� Nicolas Kovalenko, Golf and Hospitality Director of The Garzón Club added. One of those “unique� amenities is the food and wine available at the course, 500 acres of vineyards and a restaurant overseen by not only one of the most famous chefs in Latin America but in the world. Francis Mallmann, world-famous chef and restaurateur, who began his career working as a cook on a boat on Lake Nahuel Huapi in his native Argentina, is the head chef of Bodega Garzón’s restaurant, with a menu based on regional products and fish from the Atlantic Ocean offers in its main dining room a few of the town’s main square. Its wine cellars offers selections from a wide variety of grapes grown on the property. “We offer what you can’t buy anywhere else in the world,� Kovalenko continued. “With our food and wine, from Mr. Mallmann, to our golf course. This is a special place. Uruguay is a small country, but it now has a world-class golf course. I believe we have the best greens anywhere. I’ve never played better greens than these, especially when we can roll and cut them as we like. They are perfect. The course is perfect.� From the most emblematic winery of modern winemaking in Uruguay, to a world-class golf course and an extraordinary culinary experience, The Garzón Club has it all. Golf is a fundamental part of this project, and alongside the PGA TOUR and PGA TOUR Latinoamérica, The Garzón Club and Garzón Tajamares Golf continue to offer one-of-a-kind experiences to their members and guests.

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