How Sergio Garcia created the perfect foil for Portugal's best golf course

While the luxuries of Comporta's many beachside resorts are just a 10 minute drive down the road, as I stand on the first tee of Terras Da Comporta's new Torre course, the hustle and bustle of one of Portugal's most exclusive areas couldn't feel further away.

It's deathly quiet on a breezy early summer morning in Portugal. I'm playing the Torre with a few family members, and it feels like we have this small slice of rural Portugal, just 90 minutes' drive from central Lisbon, entirely to ourselves. 

Terras' other course and focal point, the acclaimed Dunas, is somewhere over the pines, but nowhere near within walking distance. Where the Dunas and its adjoining clubhouse forms the beating heart of the property, the Torre feels like another world altogether. Despite being around a 10 minute drive, it would probably take close to two hours to walk. The Torre's reception is, in stark contrast to the Dunas' opulent clubhouse, a temporary pop-up with a well-placed coffee van sat next door (a far more illustrious clubhouse is in the works). Yet there's abundant excitement around the project – as evidenced by its World's Best New Course nod at the World Golf Awards.

So really, it's just us, the turf, the trees, and boundless sand. In his full-scale debut as an designer, Sergio Garcia routed the Torre through a 365-hectare pine forest, that ambles along the coastline's natural sand dunes, beyond which lie the endless paddies of one of the country's largest rice-growing regions. At its high point, one is greeted by views out towards the Atlantic ocean, along the Alentejo coast and the peak of the Serra da Arrábida, while trees line most of the holes to some extent.

The golf itself is rugged and windswept, yet decidedly polished, Garcia combining his reverence for the Iberian peninsula's severe landscapes with a clear preference for American-style architecture.

While the Dunas is defined by huge greens, dunes and massive waste areas, the Torre is more strategic and precise, rewarding more exact shotmaking into smaller greens while ramping up the exposure to the winds blowing off the Atlantic Ocean. There's very little shade and a fair walk from green to tee on most holes, making the use of a cart all but essential on warmer days, but such is the way with European resort golf.

The Bermuda greens and bent grass fairways, perhaps naturally for a course just 6 months old, are immaculate, playing fast and fair. Garcia has been careful not to fall into the trap of carving too brutally through the landscape's natural undulations, instead letting the rolling topography lend itself to form natural bumps and troughs along the course. 

Any significant miss will have you playing out of sandy scrub, pine needles, or a combination of the two, while the soil routinely hews its way into the fairways to form natural bunkering that feels carved out of the course rather than strategically placed. It's amazing how well the course blends into the wider landscape, never once feeling overly artificial.

Much like the Dunas and other resort courses in the area, choice is one of the key components of the Torre experience. There are six different lengths you can choose to play off, the course spanning anywhere between 6,500 and 7,300 yards according to the adventure you choose. Settling somewhere in the middle will offer a fair challenge for most, while still giving you a chance to score decently and providing some tempting take-ons for longer hitters.

Not even a year old, the Torre adds to an undeniable sense that Terras de Comporta is fast growing into Europe's most exciting golfing destination. And even more improvements and a brand new clubhouse on the way to boot, we can't wait to see just how it stakes its claim as the most prominent jewel in Portugal's golfing crown.