Vale De Pinta - Portugal

Vale de Pinta is a course that tends to be overshadowed by its better-known neighbors on the Algarve Coast, such as Penina, Vilamoura, and San Lorenzo, but it is one of the best that Portugal's golfing Riviera has to offer. Located near the lively beach resort of Carvoeiro, six miles east of Portimao, Vale de Pinta was designed by American Ronald Fream in 1992. The course is one of the most pastoral in the Algarve, with long views out to the Monchique Mountains to the north and across copper-colored rock outcroppings. The broad, bumpy fairways are generously sprinkled with white-flowering almond trees, first brought to the Algarve from North Africa by the conquering Moors, as well as fig, carob, and olive trees. The stout olive trees on the course are 400 to 600 years old, with one ancient, gnarled specimen estimated to be more than 1,500 years old.

Penha Longa Golf Club - Portugal

Penha Longa is a strikingly panoramic and punctiliously maintained course laid out in the foothills of the craggy Sintra Mountains near Lisbon. Part of the Caesar Park Penha Longa Resort, the clubhouse adjoins what was the first convent of the Order of St. Jerome, built in 1355, and later owned by the Count of Penha Longa. Over the centuries, the Portuguese royal family built a palace and homes on the grounds, beginning with the retirement house of King Manuel I, where he went into mourning after the death of his wife, Maria, in 1517. Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who designed the course in 1992, took full advantage of the steep terrain and magnificent backdrops, with the par-five sixth hole tumbling downhill to a green framed on the right by a 16th-century stone aqueduct and water tower and by the pond of Adens to the left. The par threes are particularly memorable, with the fifth plunging off an elevated tee and the seventh and 15th playing over ponds. The course finishes strongly, with a tough par-four 16th snaking through the valley to an elevated green and the par-five 18th running back to the palace. The course takes its name from the Penha Longa, or long rock, a spear of granite jutting from the hillside above the 18th hole.