Just back from a press trip to see the David McLay Kidd-designed Dunas course at Comporta, an hour south of Lisbon in Portugal. Originally built between 2012 and 2014, but the site was closed down with nine holes grassed after the developer, the Espiritu Santo banking dynasty, went spectacularly bust. Course lay fallow for six years until the property was bought by Portuguese real estate firm Vanguard Properties and brought back to life by Kidd and contractor Conor Walsh, who was formerly the architect's staff shaper in Europe. It opens officially in October.
I saw the course only a few weeks before it shut down in 2014 and judged then that it would be a clear number one in Portugal the day it opened. Well, it is, and everyone on the trip concurred. Huge scale, a kilometre from the ocean, pure sand, big undulation, pine trees and scrub. The area is beautiful, a few miles south of Troia, and all sand -- if you could get water, you could build dozens of great courses there. Reminded me of a slightly less eccentric version of Kidd's Mammoth Dunes. Portugal's first true World Top 100 contender (Oitavos was in there for a few years but never belonged). See it if you can.