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)
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.
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.
