Almancil · Ria Formosa · Algarve
Quinta do Lago
Photos courtesy of Quinta do Lago, for exclusive use on this page.
Fifty-four holes, and almost everyone comes home talking about the same one: the Laranjal. Jorge Santana da Silva laid it out in 2009 over a former orange grove, inland and set apart from the rest, and it's the one nobody expects: undulating fairways between mature pines, wide greens and five par 5s. It's the quietest of the three, and the one that stays with you. The South is the historic one, the one that gives the estate its name: a par 72 of 6,488 metres by William Mitchell, with eight editions of the Portuguese Open behind it — 1976, '84 to '86, '88 to '90 and 2001. It blends precision holes with open fairways. The North is the renovated one: fully rebuilt in 2014, at a cost of nine million euros, by Beau Welling and Paul McGinley, the European Ryder Cup captain at Gleneagles. New greens, bunkers and drainage, and several dog-legs that ask you to place the ball before you swing. All of it inside an estate of over eight hundred hectares built up since 1971, among stone pines, lakes and the edge of the Ria Formosa Natural Park. It's the name a European golfer says with respect, and once you arrive you understand why.
Where a Ryder Cup captain trains. Inside the estate are the Paul McGinley Academy and a TaylorMade Performance Centre. If the trip brings a professional along, or if someone wants to genuinely fix something in their swing, this is the place in the catalogue to do it.
Where it's played
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