| CASCAIS, Portugal — Oitavos Dunes, the feted Portuguese links located 30 kilometers north of Lisbon, has capped a dizzying 8-year rise to the highest ranks of world golf with a pair of honors, both bestowed by GOLF Magazine (U.S.) and published in its September and October 2009 issues.
Opened in 2001, and designed by Arthur Hills/Steve Forrest and Associates (www.arthurhills.com), Oitavos Dunes debuted this month at no. 88 on GOLF’s coveted World Top 100 ranking. Oitavos Dunes (www.oitavosdunes.pt) also earned a place among the magazine’s 50 Greatest Courses of the Last 50 Years.
“Both honors say as much about our firm’s work as they do about our clients at Oitavos Dunes,” said Drew Rogers, the Hills/Forrest partner who directed design efforts in Portugal alongside firm founder Arthur Hills. “We first met the Hampalimaud family back in 1996. From the very beginning, their goal was to have Oitavos Dunes considered among the finest golf courses anywhere — certainly in Europe, but the world was really the stage. Along the way they have stayed glued to that vision and never faltered.
Oitavos Dunes opened for play in 2001, and was immediately hailed by tournament organizers, design cognoscenti and environmentalists alike. It was rated by Golf World International magazine the “Best New Course in Europe” in 2003. In eight short years, the course has played host to 11 professional events from all five European tours, including four Portuguese Opens, a regular stop on European PGA Tour.
Oitavos Dunes indeed preserves a unique habitat of umbrella pines, sand dunes and coastal scrub, where the dramatic Portuguese coast meets the Atlantic Ocean. There are no water features at Oitavos Dunes precisely because the property rests along a gently sloped plateau, high enough that every hole has a long view of the Atlantic and the Sintra Mountains to the north. What’s more, any water features would have been man-made, and owner Miguel Champalimaud’s unwavering intent for Oitavos Dunes was to keep the property wholly natural.
Accordingly, Hills/Forrest didn’t merely route Oitavos Dunes in the “links style” (i.e., a continuous 18-hole loop). The architects allowed the dunes to dictate what became a thrilling, non-traditional sequence of holes, each outfitted with the canny green contours, comely-but-penal green and fairway bunkering, and the classic design strategies for which Hills/Forrest is renowned.
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“At no point during a round at Oitavos Dunes is the player ensconced in a tedious stretch of par-4 after par-4, like we often see at U.S. Open courses,” Rogers explained, noting that Oitavos Dunes includes back-to-back par-5s at 7 and 8, and consecutive par-3s at 14 and 15. “It’s an entirely different mix at Oitavos. We decided to take what the site gave us, and the decision to create back-to-back par-3s made it all work, frankly. “The links tableau — and perhaps working in Europe — gave us those extra ounces of freedom to be bolder, less traditional. When you work in the links environment, you have that license and there’s some serious whimsy out there.”
Indeed, the stretch of holes from 7 to 16 includes only two par-4s — one of them (the 11th) drivable. The par-3s at 14 and 15 may play back to back, but they couldn’t be more different, or more dramatic. From the 14th tee, golfers have a view of the lighthouse on the headlands of Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point on the European continent; the hole plays 170 yards uphill over a gorge to an exposed, sandy plateau framed by this distant backdrop. The 15th plays downhill to a putting surface surrounded by a naturally amphitheater of sand dunes.
Rogers explained that his team and the Champalimauds have together continued to work at Oitavos Dunes, improving the golf experience and infrastructure, all the while proving that world class golf can be achieved and sustatined in an utterly green context. “The Champalimauds are very up front in everything they do, and Oitavos Dunes has become a very powerful statement about what resort golf can be, how lightly it can lie on the land, and what an engine it can be for the economy without sacrificing a bit of quality or flair,” says Rogers.
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