Every golf trip forces the same choice, and nobody talks about it. Play everything the destination has, or play the best of it twice? We are about to face that choice on an island neither of us has ever seen, and this time we are deciding in public. Actually, we are not deciding at all. You are. More on that below.
This Christmas we swap the Icelandic winter darkness for two weeks on Gran Canaria. Four hours of daylight at home, freezing cold, heavy wind and no golf for sunshine and around 21 to 23 degrees down there, and the clubs are coming with us. We asked our Facebook community for recommendations and the answers are still pouring in. Now the strategy needs settling, and the numbers make it a real dilemma.
Here you can see the winter arriving in Iceland ➡️
The options on the table
We researched every price on the island before booking a single tee time. The big resort courses in the south all charge €145 in winter high season:
Maspalomas Golf, a Mackenzie Ross design from 1968 beside the famous dunes;
Lopesan Meloneras, with closing holes along the Atlantic;
Anfi Tauro, the only Robert von Hagge desert design in the Canary Islands, sitting in a ravine;
and Salobre, which has two separate courses in the arid hills, an Old and a New.
If the identical pricing looks suspicious, here is part of the explanation: two of them, Meloneras and Anfi Tauro, carry the same owner’s name, Lopesan. Those are the current winter rates, verified October 2026; the new winter cards were not all out yet, and the one Canary course that has published them raised prices 10 percent, so budget for a small rise.
Then comes the different animal. Real Club de Golf de Las Palmas at Bandama charges €125, takes visitors on weekday mornings only, and enforces its handicap limits of 26 for men and 34 for women.
And then comes the one nobody will tell you about. Every guide to Gran Canaria, including the island’s own tourism website, says the island has seven golf courses. There are six. El Cortijo Club de Campo near the airport closed in July 2021, and the company went into judicial liquidation at the commercial court in Las Palmas after more than ten straight loss making years. Five years later the tourism sites still count it, and here is the part that should worry you: two international booking platforms still advertise tee times there, one of them from €46. You can put money down today on a round at a course that has not existed since 2021. We found this because we check every price before we travel, and we check whether the course is still standing. Apparently nobody else does.
Book earlier than you think
One warning before any strategy talk, for you and for us. Christmas sits at the peak of the Canarian golf season, when the island fills with exactly the kind of golfer who reads this page, and Las Palmas only takes visitors on weekday mornings. Whatever you plan to play in December, book it in October or November. We are booking ours this week.
And one date on the calendar settles part of the plan by itself. Real Club de Golf de Las Palmas was founded on 17 December 1891 by the British colony on the island, which makes it the oldest golf club in all of Spain. We land in December, and the club turns 135 that same week. Whatever strategy wins, we will be standing on that first tee, because you do not visit the birthplace of Spanish golf and drive past it.
The case for volume
Playing all six costs €850 per person in green fees, plus buggies at €10 to €30 a round where we want them, call it €950 all in. Spread over fourteen days that is one round every second day, with rest days built in, and the drives are short because the island is small. Volume also feeds the bigger mission: we have played 82 courses on our Road to 100, and six new ones would put us at 88 before New Year, close enough to smell course number 100. And honestly, we tried the rest day approach in Spain last summer. We planned four rest days and Hildur used the first one to ask why we were not playing golf. We ended up playing 21 rounds in 23 days.
Here is one of the amazing rounds we played at that trip.
The case for quality
The counterargument lives in our own experience. The best rounds of our lives were never the ones we squeezed in, they were the ones we played with fresh legs on a course that deserved full attention. Fresh legs look like this: Hildur’s hole in one at La Hacienda. Quality means picking three or four courses, playing the favorites twice, and actually seeing the island in between: the dunes, the mountain villages, the fish restaurants, the things a golf couple flies south for besides golf. Hildur’s vote lands here by instinct, because for her the point of golf has always been a beautiful place in good weather, and racing through six courses is a strange way to enjoy either.
Where we land, for now
Our working plan is a hybrid with a volume lean: play all six once, because the Road to 100 does not advance itself and every course becomes a review you can use, but protect Christmas week itself for the two courses we love most by then, played slowly, with no camera deadlines. If the first week teaches us that six was greedy, you will read about that too, because the mistakes are half of what this channel is for.
Now the honest confession: we need your help with the hotels
The golf we have researched to the last euro. The hotels are a different story. We know what we need, and we do not yet know where to find it: a quiet base in the south near the courses, comfortable for two weeks rather than two nights, secure parking for the rental car, a proper breakfast before morning tee times, and calm in the evenings, because we are coming to play golf and rest, not to queue for a buffet behind a stag party. If you have stayed somewhere on Gran Canaria that fits two traveling golfers over 50, tell us in the form below. Hotel names, apartment complexes, even the street, every detail helps, and the place we choose will get the full honest review treatment in January. And if you happen to run a hotel on the island that you believe fits us, you know where to find us [/work-with-us].
Here is a hotel we stayed at in Puerto Banús in Spain, july 2026.
Your vote decides our Christmas
Here is the deal. Tell us Volume or Quality in the form below. On December 1 we count every vote, and the winning strategy becomes the plan, published here before we fly. You are not suggesting. You are deciding.
Send your vote and we will send you something back: the complete Canary Islands green fee table, all 21 courses across five islands, every green fee, buggy cost and handicap rule verified, before anyone else sees it. Then in January you get the updated version with what we actually paid and played.
How we review when we get there, you already know: this is what we did at Lo Romero.
FAQ
How many golf courses are on Gran Canaria? Six, not seven. El Cortijo near the airport closed in July 2021, but the guides and the official tourism site still list it. The six are Maspalomas, Lopesan Meloneras, Anfi Tauro, Salobre Old, Salobre New and Real Club de Golf de Las Palmas, plus Las Palmeras, an 18-hole par-3 course in Las Palmas city.
Can you play golf in Gran Canaria in December? Yes, December is high season. Expect around 21 to 23 degrees in the south and about ten hours of daylight, still enough for 36 holes if you are greedy.
How much does golf cost in Gran Canaria in December? The southern resort courses charge €145 at the current winter rate. Real Club de Golf de Las Palmas charges €125, weekdays only. Buggies run €10 to €30 extra. Six rounds, one at every open course on the island, comes to €850 per person before buggies.
