At the beginning of 2023, with my ‘courses played’ tally standing at 982, I knew that barring injury, illness or some major crisis, this would be the year when I would hit 1,000. Those who I’d told about it were asking where I was planning on marking this particular milestone, but I hadn’t really given it too much thought.
Part of me wanted to go to the grandest course in the UK&I I’d not yet played, but that would almost certainly have meant somewhere more exclusive than I really wanted. I then pondered going off-piste and taking myself to some backwater nine-holer that no-one had heard of. And then it dawned on me that, with some clever planning, I could potentially arrange for my 1,000th golf course to coincide neatly with my 60th birthday on October 25.
In the end, that’s exactly what happened courtesy of a family press trip I was offered to Vale do Lobo in Portugal, where I would play the Royal
