The 18th gap of the Dunas Course at Terras da Comporta in Grândola, Portugal.
James Hogg
As the best British golfer of his era and a three-time winner of the Claret Jug, Henry Cotton might deal with wind and chilly. But, by his later years, he’d had it with unhealthy climate. He purchased a spot in Portugal, the place he ate contemporary seafood, drank good wine and indulged his curiosity in golf design. In 1966, Cotton reduce the ribbon on Penina, which wasn’t a world-beater, however was a watershed: the primary course in the Algarve, Portugal’s sun-splashed southern coastal area. A flood of golf improvement adopted, establishing the Algarve as a magnet for Northern Europeans — Iberia’s reply to Myrtle Beach.
That’s been the picture of golf in Portugal ever since: Resort courses brimming with boozy Brits and Scandinavians on carts. It was actually the golf I heard about loads in the early Nineties, after I spent a 12 months in Lisbon, instructing English to bored bankers. Those bundle offers down south didn’t sound half unhealthy, however I used to be car-less, on a stingy price range, and the Algarve was three hours away. The Lisbon space, for its half, had a few good golf equipment catering to rich expats however little else. The lone spherical I performed was at a modest nine-hole observe I attempted to achieve by bus, solely to wind up misplaced, wandering with my sticks down a cobblestone avenue, the place I met a kindly farmer who took me to the clubhouse on a mule-drawn cart.
Memories! They appear to be one other lifetime in the past. So a lot has modified. For occasion: Uber. Golf in Portugal is completely different too. It’s not all in regards to the Algarve anymore.
James Hogg
“Not a bad spot, is it?” David McLay Kidd says. It’s a heat October afternoon, about an hour south of Lisbon, and the Scottish-born architect of Bandon Dunes is driving shotgun in my rental. He’s guiding me down unmarked roads by means of a rolling panorama of dunes and pines. We’re in a coastal space referred to as Comporta, which journey magazines have likened to the Hamptons, owing to its popularity with well-to-do beachgoers. The distinction is it by no means had golf.
That modified, in a hushed manner, two summers in the past, when Discovery Land, the private-club community recognized for its Tom Fazio courses and fancy consolation stations, accomplished Costa Terra, a couple of clicks down the coast. Sweet spot, however members solely. The larger Comporta golf information includes the person in my passenger seat and his first-ever design in continental Europe: the Dunas Course at Terras da Comporta. We’re pulling as much as the bag drop now.
Like lots of right now’s marquee golf locations, the place has an understated, upscale air about it. Clean-lined, blondwood clubhouse. Pro-shop counter that might go as a spa check-in. But its most essential minimalist hallmark is the course itself. A brawny, lay-of-the-land magnificence, with broad fairways, ample greens and yawning sandy wastes.
It has been open to the general public since late-summer 2023, however Kidd has winged in to make it official. Tomorrow, earlier than a gathering of native dignitaries, he’ll smack a ceremonial shot and give an enthralling toast to kick off a scramble match. The crowd will eat it up. Portuguese TV will cowl the event.
James Hogg
Today, although, there’s time for a follow spherical. The tee shot on the par-4 1st gap gives a touch of what’s to return. There’s a number of leeway to the appropriate, however that leaves a poorer angle to the flag. The higher line entails a dangerous carry over sand. In its rustic look and the strategic choices, I see kinship with such different Kidd designs as Gamble Sands and Mammoth Dunes, on floor so pure for golf I can’t assist however marvel why there was no course right here lengthy earlier than.
“Believe me,” Kidd says. “It was not for lack of trying.”
Kidd’s efforts on the venture date to 2008, when he was introduced aboard, inheriting a routing architect Donald Steel had drawn 10 years earlier. He was desperate to get going, however calamities stored piling up. The ’08 financial crash put a halt on work, which resumed a couple of years later, solely to stall once more in 2014, when the venerable Portuguese financial institution that owned the land went down in Lehman Brothers-like flames that singed monetary nerves all through the E.U. In 2017, a brand new proprietor took over at Comporta, however then the pandemic hit. Decades after its conception, the Dunas Course was lastly born.
Now, it’s slated to have a sibling, the Torre Course, a collaboration between Sergio García and José María Olazábal that has damaged floor close by, with a gap date nonetheless TBD.
As all of this was gestating in Comporta, the golf scene in and round Lisbon slowly matured. One notable addition was Oitavos Dunes, an early-aughts arrival that introduced a contact of hyperlinks to the tony seaside city of Cascais. Then there have been the doings barely farther north. A day earlier than I breezed down from Lisbon to Comporta, I made an identical size drive in the other way from the capital, up the Costa da Prata, or Silver Coast, which, like a lot else in Portugal, not appears a secret. Strung alongside the water right here, backed by cliffs that recall to mind the bluffs of Torrey Pines, conventional fishing villages double as surf cities, with all of the attendant cultural trappings. On restaurant menus, take your choose: bacalhau or quinoa burgers.
Courtesy Photo
Golf in the realm is clustered round Praia D’El Rey, a resort with an eponymous seaside course that Cabell Robinson designed in 1997. Today, its neighboring layouts embrace Royal Obidos, by Seve Ballesteros, and West Cliffs, which Cynthia Dye (Pete’s niece) completed in 2017, after laboring on the venture for nearly so long as Kidd did on Comporta.
Dye refers to West Cliffs as “my baby.”
“It’s not often you get to work right by the water, so it’s special,” she says.
West Cliffs is linksy, and ocean views abound. Cup your ears on the again 9 and you may hear the waves. The different soundtrack is building: giant houses bobbing up at a formidable clip.
So a lot cash has been pouring into Portugal that the federal government just lately tweaked its tax code over issues that overseas funding was sending property values out of attain for the locals. Real property costs have soared, but the golf stays a relative discount. On my morning spherical at West Cliffs, I’m paired with three buddies-tripping German broheims whose flamboyant neon fashions distinction with their no-nonsense demeanor.
GOLF Magazine
“This place is great value,” considered one of them, an engineer named Ule, tells me. What he and his buddies paid in inexperienced charges he can’t recall, since their golf and rooms had been bundled. “But it was maybe 60 euros. You can’t get anything close to that at home.”
The Dunas Course fees roughly 3 times as a lot. In its planning and branding, the developer behind it is going for laid-back luxe, with a blueprint that guarantees low-density, eco-conscious actual property on the encompassing coastal land. The goal market is nonetheless continental Europe, however the hope is to draw extra American golfers, who make up a small fraction of rounds performed in Portugal.
Out on the course, Kidd and I’ve reached the sixteenth gap, a drivable par-4 the place the potential payoffs increase the prospect of sandy punishment. It’s find-your-ball enjoyable on a format meant to play agency and quick, the kind of golf for which individuals journey far today.
It’s not onerous to image stateside golfers hopping on a airplane and escaping, Henry Cotton–like, to heat, coastal climate. A six-hour flight from New York and a fast drive from Lisbon. Easy. Though I wouldn’t wish to guess how lengthy it could take by mule.
Portugal, by the numbers
89 — Courses in the nation
38 — Courses in the Algarve
17 — Courses in the Lisbon space
25,739 — Average variety of rounds per course yearly
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