Table of Contents
Andy Griffiths Mr Mallorca Golf: How Imperial Properties Found the Perfect Santa Ponsa Home
Andy Griffiths — the British golf professional now known across the island as Mr Mallorca Golf — is one of those clients who arrived at the Imperial Properties office with a genuinely complex brief and left with exactly the right house. His story, which the Majorca Daily Bulletin covered this week in a detailed feature on his new Mr Mallorca Golf venture, is the kind of relocation that tests every part of what a good estate agent should be. Andy and his wife Yina had spent eleven years building a life in Shanghai, with work building the largest golf academy in Shanghai with seven locations and thirty-five coaches. What they needed was someone they could trust to help them find where they were going next. That turned out to be Santa Ponsa. And the person who made it happen was Finlay Williams.
From Shanghai to Santa Ponsa — The Decision That Changed Everything
Andy's route to Mallorca was not straightforward. With a first daughter born in 2023, the family had decided it was time to leave Shanghai and settle somewhere closer to their family in the UK and Italy — somewhere they could buy a home, put children through good schools and settle in. They had almost chosen Ibiza as Yina's cousin works there as an architect, they found a house they liked and made an offer. Months of delays followed. Then their lawyer — who happened to be Mallorca-based — suggested they take a look across the water instead.
The difference was immediate and obvious once they looked at it properly. Ibiza has one golf course. Mallorca has twenty-four. For a man whose entire professional identity and new business concept was built around golf, this was not a minor consideration. Santa Ponsa — home to Golf Santa Ponsa I, II and III and many other great courses within a short drive made the decision easier. The family relocated to Mallorca in February 2025, initially renting in Santa Catalina in Palma, before finding and buying their permanent home in Santa Ponsa.
The Search — and Why Finlay Made the Difference
Starting the search for property in Mallorca from abroad is an exercise in trust. You are making one of the most significant financial decisions of your life in a country where the legal framework, the transaction process and the market behaviour are all different from what you know, often in a language you are still learning, and frequently at a distance of thousands of kilometres from the property itself. Andy and Yina met with many agents during their search. The experience that stood out — and that they came back to — was with Imperial Properties and with Finlay Williams specifically.
What made Finlay different, in Yina's words from her five-star Google review left shortly after the purchase completed, was a combination of responsiveness, knowledge and the ability to stay steady when things got hard:
"During our search for a home in Mallorca, we met with many different agents, but none were as responsive or efficient as Imperial Properties. A huge thank you to Finlay Williams, who helped us find the perfect house for our needs. He was incredibly helpful and knowledgeable throughout the entire process — even when things got difficult and previous offers fell through. We're so glad we made our purchase through him. His professionalism, honesty, and deep understanding of the local market truly set him apart. We wouldn't hesitate to work with Imperial Properties again in the future, whether buying or selling on the island."
The line that stays with us is the one about things getting difficult and offers falling through. Property searches in Mallorca — particularly at the quality level Andy was looking for in Santa Ponsa — rarely follow a straight line. Good properties attract multiple interested buyers. Chains collapse. Sellers change their minds. The difference between a search that ends well and one that ends in frustration is almost always the agent's ability to stay calm, stay focused and keep looking with the same energy after the third setback as after the first. That is what Finlay did. And it is why the family is now in exactly the right house.
Mr Mallorca Golf — What Andy Is Building Now
Andy arrived in Mallorca in February 2025 and spent the first year settling in, understanding the golf scene, learning some Spanish and getting to know the island properly. What he was not going to do — despite the pressure he felt from every direction — was fall into the routine of back-to-back lessons, often on a flat driving range and coaching sessions that differ o much to what you'd find on the course. He had spent eleven years in Shanghai where many wealthy golfers take lesson after lesson often without ever having their coach watch them play a round. He had seen amateurs buy lessons, never leave the driving range, and still feel far away from a golfer ready for the course. He started to make change with his own students, and a lot more golf course sessions followed, but the repetition and belief that you need to have "perfect technique" before getting to the course was hard to shake. That was not what he wanted to replicate in Mallorca.
The concept he arrived at is built around a "Play with a Pro" service that takes the coaching experience off the driving range and onto the course. Andy now works with hotels and concierges across the island to offer guests a complete on-course golf experience: strategy, course management, an honest demonstration of how even professionals accept bad shots, and the kind of practical improvement that actually changes how someone feels about the game. He is simultaneously playing and reviewing every one of Mallorca's twenty-four courses, building a digital platform and content library at mrmallorcagolf.com that serves golfers planning trips to the island and also offering itinerary planning and trip booking; which courses to play, in which order and what to expect from each one.
As the Bulletin's profile this week makes clear, Andy sees the opportunity in front of him clearly and with the particular energy of someone who has built something significant from nothing before. The Shanghai academy went from zero to seven locations. Mr Mallorca Golf is at the beginning of what promises to be a similarly purposeful trajectory.
Part of the Santa Ponsa Community — and Part of Ours
What we value most about the relationship with Andy and Yina is not the transaction — it is what came after it. The family settled into Santa Ponsa, became part of the community around the golf courses that give the neighbourhood its particular character, and have stayed in touch with the team at Imperial Properties in the way that the best client relationships always do. We even managed to find them a golf share at Santa Ponsa! They are not former clients. They are friends of the office — people we are genuinely delighted to see building something excellent in the town we know better than anywhere on the island.
Andy's story is also, in its own way, a precise illustration of what Santa Ponsa offers to the right person. It is not a resort you holiday in and then leave. It is a place where serious, capable, internationally experienced people choose to put down roots — and where the combination of climate, golf, international schooling, community and quality of life holds up under the scrutiny of people who have lived in Shanghai, London, Geneva, Milan and Miami and know exactly what they are comparing it with. Andy looked at all of those alternatives, chose Santa Ponsa, and has not looked back.
If you are considering making a similar move — or if you are already on the island and thinking about what the next property step looks like — the team at Imperial Properties is here, as it was for Andy's family, to make the process as straightforward and as well-informed as it can possibly be.
Browse properties for sale in Santa Ponsa and Nova Santa Ponsa
See all our properties for sale in Mallorca
