W estCliffs, which opened five years ago, gained an impressive reputation right from the off – at the 2017 World Golf Awards, it won ‘World’s Best New Golf Course’. An hour north of Lisbon, it is the second course built for the Praia D’El Rey resort, which already boasted the widely admired Praia D’El Rey course.
West Cliffs, three miles from Praia D’El Rey, was designed by Cynthia Dye. She doesn’t seem to have been imbued with quite the degree of sadistic glee that has infused some of Uncle Pete’s designs, but West Cliffs is not one of your easy resort courses. Far from it. Fairways tend to be generously wide, but miss them and, like as not, you’ll be in trouble. Several tee shots involve a fairly hefty carry to reach the fairway, so select with care which of the five tee options you choose to joust with this layout. The tees are numbered 64, 62, 57, 52 and 48 to reflect how many hundreds of metres a round will be from each set of tees, a clever idea and not one I had come across before.
The course opens with a relatively gentle par 4 and then moves to the first of the strong par 3s. The 2nd
