Vale do Lobo Ocean Course
Played here in 2012. Took my daughter and a friend (with the rest of the family) here as part of her dream trip for getting straight “A’s” throughout her four years in high school. Took the red eye into Lisbon from Philly. Drove straight to the Algarve. It’s about a 2-1/2 hour drive from the airport. In a previous write-up I described an easy way to maximize golf while on vacation with the family without getting grief: Golf on the day of a red-eye. Get the family all situated, they’ll be zapped, and you can get out to golf. Now mind you, if you don’t sleep well on a plane and easily tire, then you’ll be a tired wreck by that night so choose wisely.
Vale do Lobo means Valley of the Wolf though I didn’t see any wolves nor Los Lobos on property. It’s a nice resort in the resort town of Faro (the entire region is called the Algarve). There are two courses on property and I played the Ocean. The homes do get pretty tight to the course on some of the holes. On the positive side though there is a great variety of holes on the property: waterfront, holes that climb up from the beach and others cascade down to the water with a few holes nestled up against a pond.
Played the nines in reverse order. So 10 was a short par five (which would actually make a nice opener). It plays 435 meters from the tees I played. Quick note, a quick way to convert meters to yards if you don’t know is to just add 10%. I played solo (hence them letting me play the back first to get out and move) and was happy for that because a problem coming off a red-eye followed by a two-and-a-half hour drive is you can play like poop. I remember here that I was okay but there was a hazard about 70 yards out on ten. Now this was no big pond or anything, it was more like someone left a glass of water on the fairway and my ball of course found it. Damnit.
The 11th then drops to the sea with a beautiful view of the ocean after you crest the hill (see the second photo below and then the following for the view after cresting the hill on 11). And what I remember most about this course was on the par three 15 there were literally people on the beach (a topless beach if you so choose) about 10-feet or so from the tee (but no one topless).
There are a number of great courses in the Algarve but if I had it to do again, I might have cut out this part of the trip (we went from the Algarve the next day to Seville for a few days, stopped at Jerez de la Frontera on the way to the Costa del Sol then ferried to Morocco then drove back to Lisbon all in about ten days, ugh). If we didn’t do the Algarve it would have been one less stop and could’ve played Oitavos Dunes which is much closer to Lisbon and the top ranked course in Portugal. Just in case you’re thinking about it.
So we did eat that first night right at the resort, nice, outdoor, but nothing food-wise I remember. Instead if you do the Oitavos thing and just stay in Lisbon, I recommend getting a Vrbo. The Fado area is where the restaurants are. We ate at A Baiuca which is a little hole in the wall but was awesome – you better like whole fish and having little bones in your fish, which I usually hate but when in Rome (or Lisbon). The other place we ate is now closed so no other recommendations. Take a streetcar and don’t think because you know Spanish you’ll breeze through Portugese. We didn’t run into a lot of English spoken there and my own family didn’t understand the attempted Spanglish I tried to use to converse.
Golf Scrapbook 