I’d heard that the course was suffering with drought but I felt it was playing really well all things considered. Don’t be alarmed by other reviews on that front.

The greens are really quick and very slopy and challenging. The pace of play was absolutely horrendous. Many of the people playing were clearly not strong enough golfers. 5.5 hours and standing on the 17th (despite how glorious it was) and I thought, can I take another 30 minutes. its not an easy problem to solve at a resort golf course like this.

People are paying a lot of money and some of them are not regular golfers, and they don’t want to be hurried and they certainly want to hole out on every hole. They forget their golf clubs on the green and they don’t understand golf etiquette. This problem isn’t unique to Palmares but I do want to encourage them to try to move groups along.

that said the layout of the holes in the main is good, the par 3,s apart from one over water are a bit weak, holes 4-9 on alvor are nice , might be best to play here in the off season

The clubhouse and views of coastline are incredible. The only downside is having no drop off point meaning carrying your clubs up a couple stories worth of stairs.

Played the Praia Alvor loop.

The Praia is the ‘links’ 9 holes and I use ‘links’ loosely. The more correct term would be wasteland. It effectively plays as fairways surrounded by unkept bunkers. The holes are not interesting, not visually stimulating and honestly hard to know where you need to hit to. My home course back in the UK is a links and this 9 holes played nothing like a normal links.

The Alvor 9 holes is inland and plays as a parkland course. Compared to the many other parkland courses I had played during Portugal this 9 was poor with only 1 hole which really caught your eye and made you think this is a nice hole and that is the Par 5 4th, 560 yards downhill towards the bay. I can only imagine the Lagos 9 is better but honestly that wouldn’t be difficult.

The property is vast, with some beautiful houses already built and others at various stages of development. 

The clubhouse is stunning, with very modern design and beautiful views along both directions of the coastline, though oddly with no obvious drop off point, meaning you have to lug your bag for 150 yards - not a big deal, but a strange design.

We played the Lagos/Praia 9s today, Lagos staying closer to the clubhouse and Praia venturing further away including 4 holes with a links feel to them.

I enjoyed the Lagos loop more. The 2nd is a great long par 4 and the 8th a dog-leg par 5, both with elevated tee shots and more of those lovely views. The Praia loop isn’t great, with some repetitive feeling holes and nothing very memorable.

Unfortunately the main talking point was the terrible course condition, which was as bad as I’ve seen home and abroad. The greens were slow, sanded, with obvious patches of repair and disrepair. The fairways were bare, again with patches of really poor conditioning, meaning you can have some dreadful lies in good positions. On the Praia loop some of the bunkers were spilling out into large sandy areas on the fairways.

It’s been a hot Summer, and with some holes on links-style ground, Palmares may suffer more than most. But having played  Espiche & Gramacho in the previous 2 days, both were in much better condition throughout, and at a much cheaper rate.

We are due to return to Palmares on Friday to play the Alvor/Lagos loops but we’re trying to negotiate an alternative. 

So disappointing.

The views and general design of the Alvor 9 was good although there were several average holes.

I was quite disappointed with the links style Praia 9. You could see the attempt to create a classic links with split fairways, sand scrapes, etc but it all felt manufactured. The vegetation around the course was definitely not links hence undermining the concept.

I appreciate that I played in the Portuguese winter but conditioning was poor, especially the fairways.

I’m glad I visited but wouldn’t rush to pay the highish green fee again.