That's what ignorance is: the absence of memory. It's been 50 years since the death of one of the architects of the great leisure offer that Maspalomas has: the golf course that the Conde de la Vega Grande and Lopesan company manage in the south of Gran Canaria. Mackenzie Ross was in love with Gran Canaria and his ideas completely changed the international image of golf on an island that was a pioneer of this sport in Spain due to the influence of the military of the Army, who were, together with the British, the promoters of this sport that General Franco practiced in Tenerife.
Mackenzie Ross was a Scotsman from Edinburgh born in 1890 and was a British architect and golf course designer based in Gran Canaria. "They all understood the complexities of the game itself and closely studied the designs of the older courses that inspired them. They all seemed to have a similar vision: to maintain the mystique of the game and keep this element alive," Jonathan Gaunt, director of Gaunt Golf Design, who has designed more than 24 golf courses since 30, most of them in the United Kingdom, told Maspalomas1987H.
Throughout his life he designed many golf courses in Britain, Portugal, the Azores, Belgium, Ireland, France and Spain. Between 1945 and 1949 he carried out a major remodelling and restoration of the Southerness Golf Club in south-west Scotland, which is probably one of his most highly regarded works. In 1972 he was elected the first president of the British Association of Golf Course Architects (BIGCA). Mackenzie Ross therefore dedicated his life to promoting golf as an international sport and not just a British one.
The first golf course in Spain was founded by the British on the island of Gran Canaria in 1891. This course was reduced in area due to urban growth and was moved to Bandama. Mackenzie Ross, on the recommendation of his friend Juan Domínguez Guedes, was the one who encouraged him to design the current golf course in a place known as Lomo del Polvo. This project, from 1956 and located in the Caldera de Bandama, is situated next to the crater of an ancient volcano 800 metres in diameter and 200 metres deep, testimony to the volcanic origin of Gran Canaria.
Known as Real Club de Golf Las Palmas and opened in 1957, it is a par 71, 18-hole course with 2 putting greens, one of which is floodlit. There are also two tennis courts, a horse riding section and a swimming pool. Another course designed by Mackenzie Roos in Gran Canaria was the Maspalomas Golf Course, opened in 1968, also with 18 holes. Finally, in 1926, on the Spanish mainland, and in partnership with Tom Simpson (1877-1964), he designed the "Real Club de Campo de Málaga".
Following the success of Maspalomas, he built two golf courses in Uruguay in the heart of the city, facing the Rambla Costanera de Punta Carretas, and the other in the city of Fray Bentos, on the Uruguayan coast, in the historic Barrio Anglo, where the National Museum of the Industrial Revolution is located, in the former Liebigs Company and later the Anglo Frigorífico, on the Uruguay River, a place declared Industrial and Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.
Philip was the son of Alexander Mackenzie Ross, who was born in Edinburgh in 1850, on the doorstep of the historic Bruntsfield Links. He was the proprietor of the Café Royal Hotel in the Scottish capital and also the most successful caterer for fairs of his day. After the Second World War, Ross helped restore many golf courses in the British Isles that had been damaged or abandoned during the conflict, travelling to places such as Royal Guernsey in the Channel Islands, Castletown on the Isle of Man and Pyle & Kenfig in Wales.
