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| | Cabell B. Robinson | | In love with his profession | Cabell B. Robinson is a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects and when he first saw the site at Las Colinas de Campoamor Golf Resort he immediately reached an agreement with Gmp, the company behind Las Colinas, to design the golf course. For him, the natural beauty and privileged terrain was enough to convince him that this was a special project, and one in which he very much wanted to become involved.
“An artist, and allow me to believe that golf designers are artists, prefers to wait to see their finished work to evaluate it at its just worth. That’s why it might be premature on my part to make these declarations, but Las Colinas de Cam-poamor Golf Resort is, without a shadow of a doubt, an exceptional project that well deserves my comments prior to its construction.
“To shape the course we will use the best
American shapers which will create, under
my instructions, a landscape totally
adapted to the original terrain”
The holes of this golf course of this magnificent site wind their way through a valley which until now had been devoted to the cultivation of citrus fruits. A unique aspect of this project is that this valley and consequently the golf course, runs between sufficiently high hills to provide intimacy and isolation from the surrounding lands, which is difficult to obtain in other golf courses in the area. The whole of the development is therefore, really “self contained”, visually independent of what is happening on the outside. This aspect was – and remains – what impressed me the most with Las Colinas.
To shape the course we will use the best American shapers which will create, under my instructions, a landscape totally adapted to the original terrain. Moreover, unlike the usual relief and landscape of the area, extensive, generally arid plains, the special terrain of Las Colinas de Campoamor Golf Resort and the rich Mediterranean vegetation which surround the course confer to the deve-lopment an intrinsic beauty which we have tried to conserve. So the plants we will introduce to enhance the beauty of the course on its finish will be autochthonous since my final aim as a landscape architect is for the course to appear to be an integral part of the existing landscape.
This alone will make Las Colinas de Campoamor Golf Resort a really exceptional development in the area”.
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|     | | Up close and personal | Cabell B. Robinson is recognised as one of Europe’s top golf course designers. He was born in Washington DC in 1941, but has spent the greater part of his professional life in Europe. He is a historian by qualification, with a degree in History from Princeton (1963), and postgraduate studies in Landscape Architecture in Harvard and Berkeley (1967).
His early career was with the famous American designer Robert Trent Jones, who is responsible for some of the top golf courses in Spain, his masterpiece being the Valderrama golf course.
For 17 years, Robinson was in charge of his design and construction companies on this side of the Atlantic, but in September 1987, Robinson decided to leave the Trent Jones studio and set up on his own operation. In only two months he was working on major projects on the Costa del Sol and in the South of France.
Cabell is personally involved with every course and has made clear that he does not want his company to turn into a design factory. Of great importance for a project such as Las Colinas is the fact that he is a designer who respects the environment. His courses fit perfectly into the natural terrain and he uses all the local plants and trees in the overall plan. |
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