Atlantic adventure
A popular option among Europe’s regular heavyweights, Madeira brings a great climate with three stunning golf courses to boot
The 3rd and 4th holes at Santo da Serra use their spectacular setting to great effect. The 3rd is a par 5 of 518 yards, which sweeps to the left with its green clinging to the edge of the hillside, while the 195-yard 4th plays to a green even more precipitously placed. The putting surface is wide and shallow, and behind it lies an equally wide but ever shallower bunker. This hole is dramatic, intoxicating and scary.
Santo da Serra has three loops of nine, all designed by Robert Trent Jones. The 3rd and 4th holes are on the Machico nine and this forms the front nine of the championship layout, with the Desertas forming
the back nine. The third nine is the Serras, which is newer, shorter and flatter. From the highest to the lowest point on the 27 holes there is a difference of 1,000ft in elevation.
Another course that hits the heights is Palheiro. It is 1,600ft above sea level, which helps to give the course some glorious vistas across the island’s mountainous landscape
and out to sea. Parts of the course clamber across similarly hilly terrain, with abrupt ridges and deep valleys adding to the intrigue and spectacle.
The course is laid out within the Palheiro Estate and lies adjacent to Palheiro Gardens and the five-star hotel Casa Velha do Palheiro, a Relais & Chateaux property, ten minutes from the island’s capital Funchal. The hotel is a restored 18th-century hunting lodge and has a spa with indoor and outdoor pools, a tennis court and a croquet lawn.
The golf course is a delight on the eyes, not just from the vistas its high spots offer, but from the tropical vegetation around the course. It feels at times as though you are playing through a botanical garden with its wide variety of trees and backdrops of lush, vibrant plantings.
A unique aspect of the layout is that the nines are unbalanced; the outward nine is almost 700 yards shorter than the inward. There are five par 5s, four of which come after the turn. These include the course’s stroke-index-one 12th, which is 579 yards at its utmost and played uphill through a long valley with ridges and deep hollows to an elevated, undulating green.
This is immediately followed by stroke-index-17 – last of the layouts five par 3s and the only short hole that is not played downhill. Instead, it is played across a lily-covered valley to a large flat green.
Porto Santo is an island 27 miles north east of the island of Madeira, and part of the archipelago of Madeira. Here, at Porto Santo golf club, you can play two fine courses: a Seve Ballesteros-designed 18-hole one and a short nine-holer.
There are also tennis facilities and an equestrian centre at the club, but there is no gentle introduction to this golf course – three of the opening four holes are long par 4s, the shortest of which is the 434-yard stroke-index-one 4th. The par-5 3rd requires water to be crossed to get to the green, as does the par-3 5th. Meanwhile, the par-5 10th requires you to play across water on both your drive and second shot, and there is also water flanking both sides of the fairway where you are likely to be landing your second shot.
But the holes for which this course is famed for are still to come. The 13th, 191 yards off the whites, needs a demanding shot over a gorge to reach the cliff-top green. Seve’s design favours several risk-andreward holes and one such is the 14th. You choose how much of the chasm on this right-turning sharp dogleg par 4 you wish to take on. Be warned: get it wrong and your ball will plummet down the cliffs.
The short par-3 15th completes a trio of cliff-top beauties. However, you cannot relax. The closing hole is a par 5 of more than 600 yards with water lurking at the front of the green.