Andy DevaneyThe Alto Club Par-3 course is set to become the latest piece in Sotogrande’s golf offer, but its significance is less about adding nine holes than giving the club a missing middle ground: somewhere between the lesson tee, the driving range and a full 18-hole round. D
esigned by Ryder Cup legend Manuel Piñero, the new course measures from roughly 80 to 200 metres per hole and is built around the part of golf that tends to expose vanity rather efficiently — approach play.
Nine holes with a broader job
Par-3 courses can be treated as golf’s side room: useful, pleasant and occasionally occupied by people in no great hurry. The Alto Club is asking rather more of this one.
The layout is intended for beginners, families, experienced players and elite golfers, with enough variation in length to demand different clubs, trajectories and decisions.
That range matters. An 80-metre hole can make a newcomer feel the game is possible; a 200-metre par three can make a competent golfer wonder whether competence was ever firmly established.
The club also sees the course as a quicker option for visitors who do not have the time, or perhaps the appetite, for a full round.
The academy now has somewhere to send its pupils
The new nine holes complete a wider Golf & Academy set-up that already includes The Alto Club’s reimagined 18-hole course, the Golf Academy and a Toptracer-equipped driving range.
The practical logic is sound: coaching becomes rather more revealing when a player can take a newly learned movement onto turf where score, consequence and indecision immediately return.
That link between instruction and actual play may be the most persuasive part of the project. Driving ranges are excellent places to believe you have fixed golf. Courses tend to offer a second opinion.
Stéphane Menou, general manager of SO/ Sotogrande and The Alto Club, sees the opening as another stage in the club’s effort to cater for players across the ability spectrum, from first-timers to golfers refining specific parts of their game.
Piñero’s design puts the emphasis where scores are made
Piñero’s layout is centred on creativity, precision and course management rather than brute length. That makes the new course more than an introductory loop.
Suzann Pettersen, the two-time Major champion and Solheim Cup-winning captain who serves as Global Ambassador of The Alto Club Golf Academy, puts the appeal plainly:
“The beauty of a great Par-3 course is that it challenges every golfer, regardless of their ability. It’s a place where beginners can build confidence, juniors can develop their game, and experienced players can sharpen the skills that make the biggest difference on the course.
That’s exactly what this new course has been designed to deliver at The Alto Club – a fun, welcoming environment where people can learn, improve and simply enjoy playing golf.”
Her point is neatly illustrated by the club’s current player connections. The Alto Club is the training base of Sotogrande-raised Mimi Rhodes, selected to represent Europe in the 2026 Solheim Cup, while Sotogrande Global Ambassador Carla Tejedo uses the facilities in preparation for LPGA Tour events during her rookie season.
Sotogrande’s golf offer gets more complete, not merely bigger
The new course sits within SO/ Sotogrande Spa & Golf Resort, alongside the resort’s wider mix of golf, hospitality, wellness and gastronomy. Yet the interesting development is not another item on a resort checklist. It is the attempt to make one golf facility serve several very different purposes without becoming muddled.
For the academy, the Par-3 course is a practical classroom. For elite players, it is a concentrated iron-and-short-game test. For families and new golfers, it removes some of the ceremony and time commitment of a full round. For visitors, it offers golf in a smaller window.
That is a more useful definition of “complete” than simply counting holes. Sotogrande hardly needed proof that it takes golf seriously.
The Alto Club’s new nine may prove more interesting because they take short golf seriously too.
