{"id":404322,"date":"2026-01-10T14:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T14:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/404322\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T14:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T14:29:09","slug":"this-exotic-island-is-fast-becoming-a-golf-hot-spot-you-just-need-to-find-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/404322\/","title":{"rendered":"This exotic island is fast becoming a golf hot spot. You just need to find it"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s election week on Madeira, early October 2025, and the Portuguese island\u2019s customarily chill vibe is being pierced by boisterous, pop-up political rallies. PA systems straight outta Glastonbury pound out disco and agitprop along the gorgeous, mosaic-tiled sidewalks of normally peaceful Funchal, Madeira\u2019s capital city. The voices promising populist change \u2014 Moradia mais acess\u00edvel! (More affordable housing!), Aumento dos sal\u00e1rios! (Increased wages!) \u2014 can be heard as far away as the island\u2019s low-lying hills and quaintest oceanside villages.<\/p>\n

Inflation is a growing concern here. So are questions about unchecked tourism, which makes another of the ruling party\u2019s noisy policy planks, this one blaring from a car radio, sound even more curious than it already is: Mais campos de golfe!<\/p>\n

There are already two campos de golfe \u2014 golf courses \u2014 on Madeira, and a third on the nearby island of Porto Santo. But the conviction, like the one taking hold throughout Europe, is that waving the magic wand of golf over Madeira will be key to its fortunes and future. One new course, Ponta do Pargo<\/a> \u2014 a potentially game-changing Nick Faldo project on the island\u2019s remote, westernmost tip \u2014 is inching toward completion. And talk of a fifth course, to be nestled in Madeira\u2019s northeastern valley of Faial, is at least alluring enough to drive votes.<\/p>\n

Given how avidly the \u201cbuild it and they will come\u201d philosophy has been seized on by course entrepreneurs, you\u2019d think the ghost that haunted Kevin Costner\u2019s Field of Dreams was golf mystic Shivas Irons, not Shoeless Joe Jackson. In recent years, the \u201cbuild it\u201d faith has sparked explosive course development in Europe \u2014 even in a country as famously bereft of golf as Greece<\/a>. The continent teems with retirement-age golfers who, particularly in the winter months, cross borders in search of warm-weather loops. And where once it was almost exclusively UK and Ireland courses that drew buddy-tripping Americans, the transatlantic market is rapidly expanding \u2014 and going upscale.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time I can remember, U.S. golfers are taking a serious look at European golf experiences, and not just the traditional guy\u2019s trip \u2014 more so couples and multigenerational vacations,\u201d says GOLF\u2019s head of travel Simon Holt, who books countless dream-golf getaways for 8AM Travel<\/a>. \u201cGiven the outstanding amenities, wonderful weather, outstanding food and excellent sightseeing options, these clients are ahead of the curve. The likes of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece have invested billions on an inbound market once characterized by the UK boys on tour, sharing a room in a three-star hotel. They are now home to some of the most luxurious golf destinations in the world, with North Americans being their target audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even little Madeira, an island the approximate size of El Paso, Texas, would very much like you to visit with your sticks. If you can find it. I heard this a dozen times in the weeks leading up to a trip there: \u201cMadeira? Amazing! Where is it?\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Madeira
\n Madeira is closer to Africa than Europe.<\/p>\n

Joe McKendry<\/p>\n

LET\u2019S DROP A PIN. Although it\u2019s one of Portugal\u2019s autonomous regions, Madeira \u2014 an archipelago spectacularly distant in the North Atlantic that, in fact, is made up of distinct islands: Madeira, Porto Santo and the Desertas \u2014 sits closer to Africa than to Europe. The Portuguese discovered and settled the place in the early 1400s. A half century later, Christopher Columbus spent time there mapping trade routes, and, if the number of times his name is evoked by locals is an indication, he\u2019s a superhero second only to soccer god Cristiano Ronaldo, native son and namesake of the island\u2019s pocketbook airport. Talk to Madeiran tour guides and they\u2019ll lavish you with lore about explorers, the island\u2019s boom-then-bust sugarcane trade, Portuguese and African slaves, rampaging Algerian pirates and the rise of Madeira wine as its most profitable and renowned export.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s all about the attention economy these days, and mainland Madeira seems to be having its moment. \u201cIt has become very sort of fashionable,\u201d says Jonathan Fletcher-Blandy, whose family settled on the island a couple of centuries ago and is one of the largest purveyors of its famous fortified wine. They\u2019re also proprietors of Casa Velha do Palheiro, a historic Madeira manor house since converted to a five-star Relais & Ch\u00e2teaux hotel. Set in the hills above Funchal, the property \u2014 with its lush botanical garden, plummy amenities and quietude \u2014 is dreamlike in its secluded, old-world beauty. Because it adjoins the Palheiro Golf Club, it\u2019s also a magnet for the golfers and pleasure seekers who come here.<\/p>\n

Where Madeira once routinely lost European travelers to sexier island outposts like Ibiza, Majorca and the Canaries, images of the place are now populating Instagram and TikTok feeds. Fletcher-Blandy credits the attention, in part, to the advent of drone photography. Finally, the island\u2019s vistas and raw beauty have been captured in full \u2014 and shown to the world. \u201cYou have this incredible landscape that you hadn\u2019t been able to see before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n


\n \"The <\/a><\/p>\n

Golf in Portugal is growing \u2014\u00a0in popularity and courses<\/a><\/p>\n

By:<\/p>\n


\n Josh Sens <\/a><\/p>\n

How otherworldly is it? \u201cOne minute you think you\u2019re on Mars,\u201d posted a cheeky travel blogger, \u201cthe next minute you think you\u2019re in Jurassic Park.\u201d Or Star Wars. The producers of The Acolyte chose to shoot much of that 2024 Star Wars spin-off series on the island.<\/p>\n

Travel influencers, drawn to the exoticism, have recently rushed to Madeira. During the pandemic, digital nomads also descended, enticed by sublime year-round temps. Direct flights are, for the first time, now available from the States. And a few months ago, the New York Times made a splash<\/a> about the island\u2019s stunning network of hiking trails: scenic footpaths carved into its mountains, laurel forests and valleys, and set beside the centuries-old levadas that still carry water from Madeira\u2019s wooded peaks to its sea-level villages and towns.<\/p>\n

Between 2022 and 2024, visitors from the U.S. more than doubled. On the menu: seafood in ridiculous abundance, 13 microclimates, a thriving nightlife in Funchal, luxury cliffside hotels, a fever dream of flora, farmlands heavy with tropical fruit, ceviche and desserts to die for, a potent rum tipple called poncha. And a shot of golf.<\/p>\n

TWO THINGS ARE ESSENTIAL when taking on Madeira in a car: good power and better brakes. Vertiginous describes the roads here. Circuitous too. And narrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d says my driver for the day. \u201cThere\u2019s room for everyone.\u201d We\u2019re climbing our way to Santo da Serra Golf Club, the oldest course in Madeira, and Moises \u2014 chauffeur, mensch and interpreter of four languages \u2014 is in a polite game of chicken with a bus wedged into the alley in front of us. These unspoken negotiations \u2014 You move a little bit this way, I\u2019ll move a little bit that way \u2014 are a requirement of getting around the island, except on Via R\u00e1pida, the life-altering expressway that now circles Madeira and whose dozens of long, dark tunnels are burrowed through black volcanic rock.<\/p>\n

\"Your
\n Your guide to getting around Santo da Serra Golf Club, site of the first course built, nearly a century ago, on Madeira.<\/p>\n

Julie Schrader<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old-time locals is laughing,\u201d Moises says about the eerie passageways. \u201cMadeira is look like Swiss cheese!\u201d<\/p>\n

Even a century ago, when mules and merchants crowded their streets, Madeirans understood that golf could drive tourism. Its first course \u2014 a rough-hewn set of nine par-3s that hosted the island\u2019s first tournament, in 1932 \u2014 was situated in the hills of Machico and would eventually become Santo da Serra Golf Club. As Brits migrated to the island, pursued riches and asserted expectations of quality golf, the course and the club evolved. In 1988, decades into its existence, the club tapped Robert Trent Jones Sr. to reimagine the place, and the result \u2014 27 velvety, pristine holes set among Scotch pines and eucalyptus trees and at soaring altitudes on the island\u2019s east end \u2014 is a golfer\u2019s nirvana: ocean vistas in nearly every direction, chuckle-inducing elevation changes and a heavy dose of Zen.<\/p>\n

For decades, Jones Sr.\u2019s work in Europe was helmed by architect Cabell Robinson, and shortly after the reborn Santo da Serra opened 1991, Robinson, under his own name, designed the course at Palheiro. On a slightly lower but still lofty site in eastern Madeira, Robinson\u2019s track, opened in \u201993, is a Rubik\u2019s Cube of target golf \u2014 a beguiling but giddy test of ball-striking precision and patience. Rec golfers from mainland Portugal, Germany, the UK, France and the Netherlands tee it up in greatest numbers in Madeira, and Palheiro GC \u2014 with its myriad blind tee shots, radical elevation plunges and peculiar delight in placing towering fairway trees between you and its greens \u2014 occasionally inspires a faintly audible, multilingual and hilarious soundtrack of exasperation: \u201cSchei\u00dfe!\u201d \u201cMerde!\u201d \u201cBloody hell!\u201d But there\u2019s undeniable pleasure and specialness too: the intimacy of the layout, its own share of ocean panoramas and, from the clubhouse, a postcard view of Funchal and the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Locals love to extol the virtues of Madeiran living, so it\u2019s fascinating that they almost universally talk about Porto Santo as their Xanadu. A 20-minute flight (or two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride) away, this sliver of an island is where Columbus did a lot of his New World dreaming. The draws for 21st-century adventurers are its six miles of golden-sand beach; the healing power (or so they say) of that sand; and, since 2004, the Seve Ballesteros\u2013designed Porto Santo Golf. If mainland Madeira is sort of buzzy in its low-key way, its quieter neighbor is the kind of proudly slow-moving place where the deputy mayor\u2019s paying gig is tour guide and the resident surgeon strolls through town in floral board shorts. There are, apparently, more snails per square meter on Porto Santo than almost anywhere else on earth, and Madeirans \u2014 many of whom work six-days-a-week tourism jobs \u2014 are drawn to that pace. To the silky shore too, a palliative for their home island\u2019s lone character flaw: devilishly rocky beaches.<\/p>\n

\"porto
\n The heartbeat of Porto Santo is the Ballesteros course, a green oasis bisecting the island.<\/p>\n

Courtesy Porto Santo<\/p>\n

For sure, the heartbeat of Porto Santo is the Ballesteros course, a green oasis that bisects the island. It does 35,000 mostly walking rounds per year, walks unspoiled by twists and turns. The front and back nines run nearly parallel, with one striking exception: a cliffside set of holes \u2014 13, 14 and 15 \u2014 that, along with the Ballesteros name, gives the course its hot-with-the-tourists reputation. The Madeira Island Open \u2014 a European Tour stop, now defunct, that Santo da Serra hosted for two decades \u2014 was competed here for three years, and even the pros must have been awed. Two of these three greens hover over bluffs that plummet to the Atlantic, as does the tee on 14, a dogleg whose carry asks for but rarely gets a mammoth blast over a bottomless ravine. Thrilling and memorable stuff.<\/p>\n

The three courses are bundled into a cost-friendly Madeira Golf Passport, and their rep among locals sounds just about right. Saulo Nunes, an architect who represents the on-site interests of the owners of Faldo\u2019s much anticipated Ponta do Pargo course, puts it this way: \u201cThere are classifications \u2014 a mentality that has built up over the years. Palheiro is seen as for the rich, Santo da Serra is the first one and kind of more fancy, Porto Santo is more for the everyday person. But here,\u201d he says, pointing in the direction of Faldo\u2019s vast oceanside layout, \u201cwe want to be the sporty one.\u201d<\/p>\n

PONTA DE PARGO translates to \u201cCape of the Lighthouse,\u201d but \u201cbucket list\u201d is more what its private owners \u2014 and their partners in the ambitious if somewhat fiscally bewildered Madeira government \u2014 have in mind. Neither Santo da Serra, Palheiro, nor Porto Santo rank on a loose list of Portugal\u2019s 20 best courses. So the fantasy is that the new Ponta do Pargo layout \u2014 set 45 minutes west of Funchal on the epic, sloping promontory of a tiny parish that juts into the Atlantic \u2014 will become must-see and must-play. Maybe even for golfers the world over.<\/p>\n

\"The
\n The Ponta do Pargo course, epic but still in its infancy.<\/p>\n

Ponte de Oeste S.A.<\/p>\n

Does Faldo feel the pressure to deliver such an attention-commanding course? \u201cI don\u2019t, because I think we know what we\u2019re doing,\u201d he says, calling from London a few days after a mid-November trip to the site. \u201cWe recognize that the land is really cool, with incredible, dramatic views. And we\u2019re gonna put good-quality golf holes out there the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, when he and Faldo Design architect Paul Jansen got their first look at the location, they arrived in a helicopter, airlifted by the property\u2019s eager owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no tunnels 20-odd years ago, no highway, and at the time drive out there was, like, three hours,\u201d Faldo remembers. Still, the memory is so distant he can barely sketch in the details. \u201cWe probably didn\u2019t see a lot because it was cow farms. Wild. I bet the grass was two-foot long.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Faldo and his team on board, work on the site commenced quickly \u2014 until the 2008 financial meltdown paralyzed course construction globally. But even a decade after the crisis had eased, the project sat dormant. \u201cIt all went quiet and disappeared,\u201d Faldo says, \u201cand that was the end of that.\u201d Until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was about three years ago,\u201d Faldo remembers. \u201cMaybe in \u201922. I\u2019m suddenly reading on social media: \u2018Nick Faldo is doing a course on Madeira.\u2019\u2009\u201d He laughs. \u201cHonestly! Literally a decade or more had gone by! So we go, \u2018Well, hang on. What drawings are you using?\u2019 I don\u2019t think we did drawings \u2014 just waved our arms around the site and said, \u2018Yeah, this is doable.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s got to get done \u2014 stat. The talk is of a year-end opening. \u201cEveryone realizes the importance of it and how cool it will be for the island, so we\u2019re gonna crack on,\u201d Faldo says.<\/p>\n

The course he and Jansen have routed is definitely grand \u2014 certainly in terms of scale. \u201cThe site\u2019s enormous,\u201d Faldo says, \u201ceasily a mile and a half from corner to corner.\u201d Asked to describe its style, he searches for a word. Parkland is out because the place is treeless. It\u2019ll be seeded with kikuyu and very green, so linksy won\u2019t do. \u201cCliffland!\u201d he finally says, laughing. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be \u2018cliffland\u2019 for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Faldo
\n Faldo and his associate Paul Jansen eye the approach on Ponta do Pargo\u2019s par-5 16th.<\/p>\n

Faldo Design<\/p>\n

Island insiders keen for the course to succeed but wary that Madeira mishegas will get in the way of a late-2026 debut are banking on golfers being blown away. One of them is sure of it \u2014 knocked sideways by North Atlantic winds that routinely buffet the exposed site, where eight of its 18 holes will play along bluffs more than three football fields above the sea.<\/p>\n

Faldo is preparing for it with widened fairways, limited bunkering. Ponta do Pargo will be set up to test the better player, he says, \u201cbut first it\u2019s a resort course, so we\u2019ll build in lots of runoffs. The kikuyu will slow things down, so will the gorse. Obviously, it\u2019s got to be playable for club golfers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Centuries ago, even when Madeira\u2019s beauty was still radically untamed, the island was a playground for the world\u2019s aristocrats. Among those who arrived in their Sgt. Pepper suits and corsets: Empress Elisabeth of Austria; Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh; Maria Pia of Savoy, the Queen of Portugal. Before that helicopter touched down in 2006, Sir Nick Faldo had never visited here. He\u2019d not only never played in the Madeira Island Open, until our conversation he\u2019d never even heard of it. But he\u2019s high on this place and sees it as the easiest of sells.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy god, it\u2019s a lovely island,\u201d he says. \u201cHonestly, everything is so nice. Everybody is happy there. You\u2019ve got this great weather. It\u2019s scenic everywhere you go. Put all that together and\u2009\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Yep. Yet another thumbs-up from royalty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s election week on Madeira, early October 2025, and the Portuguese island\u2019s customarily chill vibe is being pierced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-404322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}