Quinta da Marinha

The championship course at Quinta da Marinha is set within a luxury 5-star resort close to Cascais, a former fishing village on the Estoril coast that’s now a modern day affluent suburb of the Portuguese capital.

Robert Trent Jones Sr. laid out the 18 holes amongst stands of pine trees on a flat piece of property slightly inland from Guincho beach on the Atlantic shoreline with some of the fairways flanked by small holiday apartment buildings.

The six par threes here steal the show, beginning at “Ravine”, the 4th and ending at “Almost There” the 16th. A major attraction of these one shotters is that they comprise a set of “proper” short holes, sensibly measured between 143 and 182 yards.

A number of professional competitions have been held at Quinta da Marinha since it opened in the mid 1980s. The first of these was The Ladies Masters in 1988, an event on the European Women’s Tour that was won by Laurette Maritz-Atkins from South Africa.

In 2002, the course was used for the Estoril Seniors Tour Championship and Denis Durnian emerged as winner, beating Irishman Eamonn Darcy in a sudden death play-off. Finally, in 2007, Ross McGowan won the Estoril Challenge de Portugal competition, shooting a final round 66 to finish three strokes clear of his nearest challenger.

In recent years, the holes have been re-sequenced, with the old 11th now becoming the new 1st hole and the former 10th now played as the current 18th, in front of the hotel. This had led to the awkward situation of playing four par three holes and three par fives on the shorter back nine, which now gives the course a somewhat disjointed feel and doesn't really make for a cohesive flow of holes.