Vilamoura · Algarve
Vilamoura
Photos courtesy of Vilamoura, for exclusive use on this page.
This is where the Algarve's modern golf began, and the Old Course remains the benchmark everything else is measured against. Frank Pennink designed it in 1969: a par 73 of 6,254 metres among tame pines, narrow fairways and no concessions. Martin Hawtree remodelled it in 1997, it hosted the 1976 Portuguese Open, and it's called the grande dame of the Algarve. The other three resemble it in nothing, which is the fun of playing them back to back. The Pinhal (Pennink, 1976, with Robert Trent Jones Sr. touches in 1985) is mature parkland: the front nine runs tight between tall pines and the back nine opens up, with the sea and Vilamoura visible beyond. The Laguna, by Joseph Lee, is the different one: open, links-like fairways with water woven into the round again and again, changing the kind of shot entirely. And the Millennium, by Hawtree, blends nine inherited holes with nine newly built ones among stone pines. Once you're done, the Vilamoura marina is fifteen minutes away: a thousand berths, terraces and, right next door, the Roman ruins of Cerro da Vila. It's the Algarve that doesn't switch off once the clubs are put away.
Where it's played
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