When you’ve only been in a job for a matter of months, it can take time to establish yourself and set your own agenda.

But for Arturo Manzano Ferreiro, the 164km move south along the Costa Blanca coastline in Spain to Las Ramblas Golf in Dehesa de Campoamor looks like it may work out perfectly.

Ferreiro started playing golf from the age of nine when his father took him to Real Club de Golf Manises which is located next to the airport in Valencia. Rather than sit and watch the planes land and take-off from the adjacent runway, Ferreiro instead got hooked on the sport, and persuaded his father to pay for some lessons so as he could improve his game.

A member throughout his teenage years, and now a qualified coach, Ferreiro began marshalling at Real Club de Golf Manises in December 2004 as a 21-year-old.

“At the end of my first year in Manises, El Bosque called me to give me an offer because they wanted a person like me, so I accepted the offer because it was a big jump from Manises to El Bosque,” recalls Ferreiro.

Located west of Valencia, El Bosque is a Robert Trent Jones design, similar in character to his more famous layout at Valderrama and is where Ferreiro began to learn his trade working in the sales and reservations department.

Ferreiro spent five years at El Bosque, before moving south of Valencia to La Galiana Golf Resort as operations director commenting: “I took La Galiana from zero to what it is now.”

After a ten-year tenure at La Galiana, he departed to return to coaching at an indoor golf centre, but it soon became apparent that he was destined to return to golf management and missed working at a course.

“I was working in an indoor area and teaching lessons with Trackman and GCQuad,” he recalled. “But it’s true that when you are inside an office, it’s like you are inside a jail – it’s completely different.

“So, when I spoke with [the owner of Las Ramblas] Antonio Perez about the possibility to come back to a golf course again, my smile returned, and I immediately accepted his approach.”

Formerly part of Quara Golf, Las Ramblas in now solely owned by the Patrimi Group and has plans to reposition itself as one of the stand-out destinations in the region. And after recruiting Ferreiro in August 2022 as general manager, the owners have already set down a marker in the sand as to their intensions.

With planned on-course investment of €2.25 million and close to 50,000 rounds per year, the mantra that Ferreiro appears to be adopting is one of quality, and not quantity.

“The goal of Las Ramblas is, year-by-year, [to have] better player service; better quality maintenance [and] better quality in the retention of the staff.

“And if we put that level of player service at a high level, we can [then] start to increase the green fee price. Because we don’t want more people than [50,000] because in October we were over 200 players every day, and it’s not possible to have more.

“In my mentality, we want to give all players the best experience. We want to say ‘experience’, and not just 18 holes of golf,” he is keen to emphasise.

One of the first elements of the re-branded Las Ramblas golf experience will be a new starters hut that is due to be constructed over the winter in readiness for the beginning of the 2023 season.

“I think this is one of the things that players feel good about,” he added. “Because when the starter receives you on the first tee and says ‘Hello, and welcome to Las Ramblas. Is this your first time playing here?’ you feel special.

“And depending upon the reply, you can either recommend how to play the first two or three holes, or if it’s a client that comes every year, we can speak about other things. In my opinion, it’s one of the first things that I want to do to increase the experience of the players.”

Ferrerio also has plans to shake-up the way the tees at Las Ramblas are identified and is keen to examine gender-neutral options.

“Another thing we want to do on the course is remove the thinking that yellow markers are for men, and red are for women. It should be more about your level of ability, and if you are playing with a handicap less than ten play from the back tees because you’ll enjoy a completely different course.

“Likewise, if you play between 28-36, then why not play from the red tees because your experience will be far better.

“I’ve never understood why golfers play from the white tees when they can’t hit a driver more than 100 meters, and if you play ten strokes over your par, your experience is not good.

“But if you play from the red tees, and your score is par or one over, then your have a much better experience.”

And whilst still on the subject of a better experience, Ferrerio has plans to introduce an on-course buggy bar for 2023 saying: “On a commercial golf course with 50,000 players per year, if you have a buggy bar, it’s easy to get good income.”

But in order to offer great service, you need good staff, a point which Ferrerio is all too aware of.

“We need to contract two more employees than we have now,” he said. “And we will change the time of work for every employee because now the work time for my employees is really strange.

“Some staff work six hours on a Monday, then seven on a Tuesday as a marshal followed by a day in reception on a Wednesday and Friday in the garage. It’s impossible to give a good service when you don’t watch the same people in the same area. In my opinion, it’s important that you have a team for reception, a team for the garage, and a team for the golf course.”

Like many courses on the Costa Blanca, Las Ramblas is moving away from the traditional membership route towards green fee packages.

“We have 90 memberships at the moment,” said Ferrerio, “but that is the maximum and we don’t want more. In the future we will probably reduce that number as we prefer to sell packages of green fees.”

But with the pandemic still a recent memory, and the cost-of-living crisis affecting golfers affordability to travel, Ferrerio does accept that the sensible option is to have a mix of both members and green fee players.

“If you are a commercial course, you can have a lot of members that reduce the capacity to sell green fees,” he admits. “But it’s also true that 90, 80 or 75 members gives you a good atmosphere every day on the golf course, as well as guaranteed income.”

Aside from the €2.25€ million investment on the course – which will be spent re-designing some of the holes – there are plans for a small boutique hotel next to the clubhouse. Plus, Ferrerio is currently negotiating for an upgraded irrigation system and new course maintenance equipment, with an order set to be placed soon.

Aged 39, Ferrerio describes himself as still young, and accepts that the challenge at Las Ramblas is his biggest to date.

“Las Ramblas is a big jump in my career and is my first role as general manager,” he accepts. “But I think that I have enough knowledge from my previous experiences at Manises and La Galiana.

“To come to manage Las Ramblas is a worthy challenge and a good opportunity for me.”