Salvador Lucas, golf manager at La Finca Resort in Alicante, Spain, is a man who I share a few things in common with. Firstly, we were both born in October 1970, with Lucas the eldest by a mere 72 hours.

And secondly, we both have an affection for La Finca and Villamartín – two courses I regularly play – both of which are managed by Lucas under the stewardship of the family-owned Pemar Group.

And with major changes planned for Villamartín – more about that later – Lucas is just about to embark on a journey which may well see him spend more time back where it all began as a caddiemaster in 1991, aged 21.

With no interest in golf, and no desire to take up the sport, Lucas was offered a summer job as a caddiemaster at Villamartín, due to the simple fact that he could speak English. A tennis player, Lucas was informed of the role by the sister of one of his best friends, so applied without really knowing what he was actually applying for.

“To be honest, in those days, the most important requirement was having good English skills, which I had,” he explains. “I will never forget the first morning when I arrived, and I asked what I needed to do, only to be told to start brushing the floor.

“Then they told me to start cleaning the golf clubs, so I set about cleaning 400 golf bags, many of which were full of dust as they had been abandoned. It took me the whole day,” he recalls with a wry smile.

“It was totally different then compared to now, as in a busy day you had 60 customers, and zero in the middle of the week.”

Lucas spent the following 13 years learning his trade, whilst advancing the customer experience at Villamartín, including introducing new golf management software which at the time, was cutting-edge technology.

“When I was the assistant golf manager, we were one of the first golf courses outside Catalonia to introduce golf management software,” he recollects. “Everything then was paper based with green fee tickets and I remember using a computer with Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS thinking ‘wow, what am I going to do with this?’

“So, I started to study MS-DOS and dBase, which was the programme the software was written in, and shortly after, the software developer started to send me updates to code myself.

“Updates were sent using floppy discs in the post because there was no internet at the time, so I ended up coding the software too. We also used to receive bookings by fax, so I implemented a protocol that would integrate the incoming fax message into the booking software.”

When asked if he ever thought about changing career paths and working as a software developer, he says that although he had offers, he was happy at Villamartín, until the GM at La Finca retired, and in 2005, Lucas was invited to succeed him.

“Managing La Finca was a totally different job as it is a pure commercial golf course whereas Villamartín is semi-private with shareholders,” he admits.

“At La Finca we had just one-year memberships, so I tried to introduce some kind of club atmosphere even though members were not shareholders because there was the possibility to grow the membership. At the time, there was no growth in golf tourism as we didn’t have hotels in the area, so we needed to do something for the members.

“But after we built and opened the hotel in 2009, I then became more involved in the commercial operation [of both courses] including accommodation.”

And with a Masters in Revenue, Lucas set about reinventing the revenue model at La Finca, opting to controversially dispense with annual memberships in 2022, replacing them with a voucher-based system yielding a better rate of return.

“In the past, the record number of rounds in a year was 57,000, and now we are doing 46,000 which is very good as it keeps the golf course in better shape. It also improves the pace of play,” added Lucas, who has doubled the rack rate from €75 when he took over La Finca, to €150 now.

“We are one of the very few golf courses or golf companies that has a revenue department,” claims Lucas. “I work with a woman who checks the reports, but I do the analytics, and I plan the strategies, and there is a huge difference after applying revenue strategies.

“Golf is a seasonal business, so you have the opportunity to understand many things, like the pace of sales, and the booking season as well as your markets as every market is different – you get to learn a lot of knowledge, and I love it.

“It’s something that I’m very proud of as the company trusted me and paid for me to [study] for my Masters.”

With La Finca and Villamartín both part of the same group, vouchers at La Finca can be used at Villamartín, and shareholders at Villamartín can play La Finca, although that status quo could change come the summer of 2026.

Built in 1972, and designed by Robert Dean Puttman, the historical course is starting to show its age, and needs an upgrade, especially the antiquated irrigation system which needs to be manually operated every evening, one of only three courses in Spain with the same predicament.

There are also safety concerns over the current routing – which involves crossing a main road after the first – so architect Tim Lobb has been tasked with remodelling the layout, removing the second hole and incorporating a new par 3 on land the club hopes to purchase.

“Villamartín is a unique place but there is a big difference between the front nine and the back nine, which has sea views, so some of the existing routing will be changed.

“We plan to fully renovate the golf course, starting with the irrigation system, and increase the size of the greens and improve some of the landing zones. There are currently too many blind shots on the course, and too often you don’t have a view to the green.”

The crowning glory of Lobb’s redesign will be the new par five 18th hole – currently a par four – which will incorporate the clubs existing driving range and a new irrigation lake.

But as impressive as the proposal is, the project, which is estimated to cost €8million, needs to be financed, and with 500 shareholders, the membership needs to be fully on-board with both the course changes, and the extensive revenue changes that have been proposed to their existing contracts.

Whether or not Lobb’s design will ever be realised remains to be seen, but if Lucas has his way, then midway through 2026, Villamartín will close for the best part of 15 months and re-open late 2027 as the standout destination on the Costa Blanca with shareholders permitted to play La Finca during the renovation works.

Aged 54, Lucas is too young to retire and clearly too involved in the day-to-day operations of both destinations. When he finds time, he is president of the Costa Blanca Golf Association, which represents 26 courses in the region, and spends time in Finland with his Finnish wife, Jenni who works in the travel business.

“We are both workaholics he says, and unless I win the EuroMillions, I want to retire here,” he says. “This is my home; this is a great company; and it’s a great family business.

“I love this job, and there is no better job even though the salaries can be improved,” he smiled. “We work in a lovely environment, and this is what I say to all my employees is that we are so lucky because we work in a business where the people – our customers – come to be happy, and this is one of the things that I love about this business.”