Praia D’El Rey Golf (West Cliffs Course) – Review and Rating

Translated by AI

West Cliffs, which opened in June 2017, is the latest addition to the Atlantic coast’s range of good courses.

It is about 2,000 meters, or five golf holes, between West Cliffs and Praia D’El Rey. So the landscape should not differ much between the two courses. Or so you might think. And yes, both courses lie right next to the Atlantic. But while Praia D’El Rey is a parkland, woodland and seaside course all in one, West Cliffs is a pure links course.

Yet the architects of both courses say they kept as much as they possibly could of the original vegetation and the natural dunes and cliffs. So similar and yet so different. How can that be?

West Cliffs’ architect, the American Cynthia Dye McGarey, gave part of the answer when she opened West Cliffs in the summer of 2017. She said:

“Only some of the holes have natural sand dunes. On many holes we had to cover the ground with crushed sand from quarries.”

In other words, she and her team did make some fairly substantial changes to the original landscape after all.

That said, I still have to tip my golf hat to the fantastic job Dye and her crew have done. West Cliffs definitely has the potential to become both number one in Portugal’s golf sky and one of the best in the world.

A round on the course leaves you wanting more. Already on the third hole, a par 3 with index 1, the tone is set. From tee to green water spreads out on the right, while the left side is covered in dense brush. In between winds a fairway so undulating that the roller coaster at Gröna Lund in Stockholm should blush with shame. Just under 100 meters short of the green, a beautifully dressed sand dune rises in the middle of the fairway.

Both hole five (par 3) and hole seven (par 5) are other highlights on the front nine that stay in the memory. Hole five is admittedly only 118 meters from the yellow tee, but if you miss the undulating green off the tee, the ball is sure to land on the superbly built protective wall of bunker and sloping fringe.

Hole seven is the course’s hardest par 5, with a downhill sloping fairway, followed by a dogleg left and a sweep over dense brush to an elevated green.

There is a little time to regroup on the next nine holes, but you can’t relax completely. I took the opportunity to admire the lovely flower arrangements that frame holes 13 and 14 before it was time for four delicious closing holes back to the clubhouse.

Once West Cliffs has been fine-tuned in a few years, I’d bet a really big euro that we will count it among the elite of golf courses, both in Europe and the rest of the world.

This page by Bo Sjosten was originally published in Swedish on our sister site Golfjournalen.se. It has been translated by AI.