Europe’s Mid-Amateurs Tee Up at Palmares

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Eighty golfers, fifty-four holes, and not one of them doing it for a living.

Mid-amateur golf is the game’s best-kept secret: players over 25 who have kept their amateur status, their day jobs and, in this field, some quite alarming handicaps. From Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November, the best of them are in Lagos for the 9th Portuguese International Mid-Amateur Championship at Palmares. Run by the Portuguese Golf Federation and counting for the World Amateur Golf Ranking, it moves to the Algarve after last year’s edition at Troia. (FPG)

Palmares golf course in Lagos with the sea in the background

The office can wait until Monday.

The Field

The final entry lists carry 60 men and 20 women from more than a dozen countries. Sweden sends the largest party, with 11 men; Germany and Portugal have nine apiece, and Ireland six. Top of the men’s list is Germany’s Florian Dittrich, off plus 5.2 — a handicap that suggests the day job is not especially demanding. Compatriot Yannic Völker (+4) and Sweden’s Jonas Olsson (+3.9) follow him in. (FPG entry list)

Ireland’s Aideen Walsh (+3.2) leads the women’s list, ahead of Belgium’s Elsie Verhoeven (+2.8). (FPG entry list) Neither of last year’s champions, Sweden’s Hampus Wijkstrom and Germany’s Silvia Wilms, is on the lists, so both titles are up for grabs. Wijkstrom won at Troia with a closing 66; we covered it here.

The Home Contingent

Portugal’s hopes rest on players in form on the Federation’s own Mid-Amateur & Senior Circuit. Pedro Sá Lima and Marta Lampreia have both won two of this year’s circuit events, at Amendoeira O’Connor and Quinta de Cima, and Lampreia took the mid-amateur and senior titles on each occasion. Neither appears to have much use for second place. (FPG)

Scott Blackshear, twice this season’s circuit senior champion, has the most useful advantage of all: Palmares is his home club. Ricardo Soares, the best Portuguese finisher at Troia last year, is also back.

The Course

Palmares has 27 holes, redesigned by Robert Trent Jones Jr., running between dunes, woodland and hills above the Alvor estuary and the Bay of Lagos. The greens are bentgrass, the fairways Bermuda. The men play from the yellow tees at 5,700 metres and the women from the red at 4,700, which sounds short until the wind gets up off Meia Praia. (FPG Terms of Competition)

The format is three rounds of stroke play and a sudden-death play-off if needed. A Nations Cup runs alongside it, with teams of two or three counting their best two scores each day. With 11 Swedes in the field, that looks a reasonable bet.

Playing It Yourself

You need not be plus five to enjoy Palmares. Visitors can play all three loops, and the Palmares Beach House Hotel puts you on Meia Praia, minutes from the course. Lagos’s old town, with its grilled sardines and cataplana, is a short drive away.

Palmares Beach House Hotel on Meia Praia, Lagos

For a little competition of your own, the West Algarve Golf Trophy returns to Palmares, Espiche and Boavista from 25 to 27 November. Handicaps there are rather more forgiving.

Browse our Algarve golf courses and book Palmares on a weekend without 80 low handicappers ahead of you.

The Algarve’s Amateur Season: A Winter Tournament Diary

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Seven tournaments, seventeen days, sixteen courses and a great many scorecards signed in good faith.

Winter has always suited golfers in the Algarve. The greens are firm, the light is low and golden, and nobody is scraping ice off the windscreen before a 9am tee time. From late November, the region’s resorts also lay on a full calendar of amateur Algarve golf tournaments, from week-long festivals spread across five courses to events with nearly four decades of history behind them. (Clubhouse Algarve)

Bring a handicap certificate. And a pencil you trust.


Golfers walking a sunlit Algarve fairway lined with umbrella pines on a winter morning

The West Opens the Account

The season starts on 25 November with the eighth West Algarve Golf Trophy, three days of competition across three very different courses around Lagos: Espiche, Palmares and Boavista. It finishes on 27 November, which leaves just enough time to blame the greens before the next event.

Palmares is the one to circle. Its 27 holes, redesigned by Robert Trent Jones Jr., run between dunes, woodland and hills, with views over the Alvor estuary and the Bay of Lagos. (SAPO) Espiche, meanwhile, is midway through a two-year programme of course improvements, so regulars may find it has had a haircut.

Overlapping it, our own 9th Tee Times Prestige Tournament runs from 26 to 29 November: three rounds of individual Stableford on Quinta do Lago’s Laranjal and North courses and Monte Rei’s North, with a tapas welcome and a prize-giving dinner either side. It’s capped at 60 players and fully booked, which we are choosing to take as a compliment.

One Week, Three Invitations

From 28 November to 5 December, the choice becomes almost unreasonable. Vale do Lobo hosts its 27th International Amateur Golf Tournament on the Royal and Ocean courses. Just along the coast, Quinta do Lago stages its eighth Golden Tournament across Laranjal, North and South.

The same week, the East Algarve Golf Festival moves between Castro Marim, Benamor, Monte Rei, Quinta da Ria and Quinta do Vale. Monte Rei’s Jack Nicklaus layout comes freshly renovated, with rebuilt greens and bunkers after six months’ work with Nicklaus Design in 2026. (SAPO) The bunkers, at least, should behave.


The clifftop 16th hole on the Royal Course at Vale do Lobo, playing across a ravine to the sea

Vilamoura’s Old Faithful

The Grande Troféu de Vilamoura, held every year since 1987, is one of the longest-running amateur events in Portugal. This year it runs from 4 to 7 December: a practice round, then competition on the Millennium, Pinhal and Old Course. The Old Course opened in 1969, so it has seen a few trophies come and go. (SAPO)

For those who can’t face going home yet, the fourth Sotavento Golf Trophy follows from 8 to 11 December, taking Monte Rei, Quinta da Ria and Quinta do Vale back into battle in the east. That’s seventeen days of tournament golf, should anyone at home be counting.


A tree-lined fairway on the Old Course at Vilamoura, framed by tall umbrella pines

New Year, Same Handicap

The 2027 calendar opens in Vilamoura with the 28th International Golf Classic, 9 to 16 January, played over the Old Course, Pinhal, Millennium and Laguna. It draws amateurs from around the world. Vale do Lobo follows from 24 to 31 January with its 33rd Amateur Week, a mix of competition and social events on the Royal and Ocean.

At Quinta do Lago the same week, our own 10th Tee Times Open Pairs Championship runs from 27 to 30 January: a Texas Scramble on Laranjal, then Betterball Stableford on the North and South.

Five Rounds in the East

There is still room on our East Algarve Golf Trophy, from 6 to 13 February. Five rounds take in Benamor, a Sir Henry Cotton design, Castro Marim, Monte Rei’s North, Seve Ballesteros’s Quinta do Vale above the Guadiana, and Quinta da Ria beside the Ria Formosa. A free day on the Wednesday allows for recovery, or reflection, depending on Tuesday.

Seven nights at the Vila Galé Tavira are included, along with breakfast, shared car hire, a welcome reception, a Vila Galé wine tasting and a prize-giving dinner. Prices start at €1,133 per person sharing.

Spring, and a Spot of Cotton

Spring brings the Vilamoura Pro-Am from 1 to 6 March, at The Els Club Vilamoura, the Old Course and Pinhal. Then comes Vale do Lobo’s 16th Spring Amateur Golf Tournament, 13 to 20 March, and the resort’s Foursomes Week (23 to 29 May) reaches its 43rd edition, having started in 1983. Some partnerships in it have presumably lasted that long. (Clubhouse Algarve)

In between, the 11th Penina Golf Week runs from 9 to 15 May on the Penina Championship course, Sir Henry Cotton’s design, the Algarve’s oldest course and a ten-time host of the Portuguese Open. Three competition rounds and a pairs finale come with six nights at the Penina Hotel & Golf Resort, from €803 per person sharing. There’s even a day off midweek, which Cotton would surely have approved.

Picking Your Week

The simplest plan is to choose an event and stay close to it. Vilamoura suits the Grande Troféu and the January Classic, with the Tivoli Marina Vilamoura a short walk from the marina restaurants.

Vilamoura Marina Evening
The Golden Triangle covers Vale do Lobo and Quinta do Lago. The east has its own base in Monte Rei Golf & Country Club, while Lagos and the Palmares Beach House Hotel put the West Algarve Trophy on the doorstep.

Entry rules and formats vary from event to event, so check with the host club before booking flights. Then let us do the rest.

Browse our Algarve golf holidays and build your trip around the tournament of your choice.

Balaia Golf Celebrates 25 Years with a Members’ Birthday Tournament

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Twenty-five years Celebration. Nine holes. 20 members. And not a par 4 in sight.

Balaia Golf, the short course tucked into the pine woods of Balaia Golf Village on the eastern edge of Albufeira, has marked its twenty-fifth anniversary with a members’ tournament, a prize-giving and a dinner in the clubhouse. Twenty members played nine holes in sunshine and warm temperatures. The Algarve does not really do anniversary rain.

Balaia 25 Anniversary Golf Tournament participants

The Winners

The French took the honours. Phillipe Cordier won the men’s prize with 20 points, while compatriot Viviane Dujardin won the ladies’ competition with 17. Ian Foulis claimed nearest the pin — the one prize on a par-3 course for which every hole qualifies.

A putting competition for beginners ran alongside the main event, and the trophy went to Belgium’s Marie-Angèle Beeckman. Balaia CEO Ana Bachmann presented the prizes, looking back over the resort’s history and thanking the team that keeps it a place guests return to year after year.

Tournament ladies winner receiving prize from Balaia CEO Ana Bachmann
Tournament mens winner receiving prize from Balaia CEO Ana Bachmann

Two Founders Remembered

The course opened in 2001 within the resort businessman Robert Bachmann had founded some years earlier. The golf, though, was the idea of Gad Ron — then general manager, a friend of Bachmann’s and the man behind every stage of the golf at Balaia. Both have since died, and the evening paused to remember what they built.

There is continuity, too. Maria José Pinto has directed the golf since November 2000, before there was a course to direct. In an industry where managers change more often than pin positions, that is going some.

The Course

Southern Golf laid out nine par 3s among the resort’s pines, ranging from 67 to 160 metres; played twice, the 18-hole card measures 1,968 metres. The course is rated for the World Handicap System and has its own tees for Pitch & Putt competitions. (Visit Portugal)

Players on the green at Balaia Golf, Albufeira

It is short, not easy. Undulating fairways, excellent greens and small targets make it a proper examination of the short game — precisely where most of us lose the shots we later blame on the driver. Its hundred-plus members would agree.

A short par 3 green framed by trees at Balaia Golf, Albufeira

A Busy Anniversary Year

The members’ tournament was not the only celebration. On 26 and 27 September Balaia hosted the Albufeira International Pitch & Putt, three rounds of stroke play over the nine holes. Hugo Espírito Santo of Quinta das Lágrimas won on 150, 12 under par, four shots clear of Finn Gordon from Vilamoura. (Jornal do Algarve)

Back at the anniversary, the prize-giving and dinner were accompanied by live music from Inês Pinto Machado. Twenty-five years of short game, it turns out, deserves a long evening.

A Base with Bonus Holes

Balaia is a resort first: around 480 apartments, tennis courts, pools, a driving range and academy, and the beach within walking distance. The nine holes are on the doorstep, so a quick round before breakfast becomes a daily habit rather than a holiday resolution.

The bigger courses are close by. Pine Cliffs and Salgados are minutes away, and the Vilamoura Old Course is a short drive east. Whatever your preferences, you are sure to find the perfect Golf Course course amongst our listings.

Browse our Algarve golf holidays and book your ideal Golf Getaway with Tee Times.