Óbidos · Over the Dunes · Portugal
The back nine is what sells the course: it opens toward the ocean, and from several tees you see the whole Atlantic, with nothing in front of you. It's the view that stops the group before anyone swings. Cynthia Dye, of the American dynasty of golf architects, designed it over a dune system facing the sea. Right after opening it was named best new course in the world in 2017 at the World Golf Awards, and it remains the most celebrated course on the Silver Coast. It's 5,889 metres, which isn't a lot, and yet it isn't an easy course: the difficulty is in the terrain. Dunes, heather rough, tall pines and constant elevation changes — there isn't a single flat hole — so here a buggy isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. It sits next to Praia D'El Rey and a few minutes from Bom Sucesso.
Short on paper, demanding on the course. Five thousand eight hundred metres deceives anyone who looks only at the scorecard. What matters here isn't distance, it's the elevation and the heather: you don't play your way out of West Cliffs' rough, you escape it.
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