Hundreds, if not thousands, of North American golfers now make the journey each year to the Algarve in southern Portugal. Paul Trow, who first played there more than four decades ago, marvels at how the region remains the game’s most popular European destination

Monte Rei is at the forefront of golf in the eastern Algarve

You can’t miss them. By the side of seemingly every road they bombard your eyes with their vibrant shapes and colors—hand-painted pots, ewers, urns, dishes, vases and tiles.

This is artisan pottery at its best, the national product that tells you exactly where you are. Portugal—or to be more precise, its southern province, the Algarve. These (largely terra cotta) ceramics, beautiful in a rustic, utilitarian way, are a defining feature of the Algarve—from the headland town of Sagres on the westernmost tip of its Atlantic coastline to the border with Spain the best part of 100 miles further east.

But earthenware is far from being the Algarve’s only claim to fame. For the last half a century, its earth has been carved and shaped in an entirely different way, a process no less beautiful, though undeniably more sophisticated. However, in terms of the boost this has given to the region’s year-on-year tourism figures it is arguably even more utilitarian.

Remarkably, the first of the region’s 35 golf courses, designed and built by the late Sir Henry Cotton on a soggy old rice field at Penina, a few miles east of Sagres, was not constructed until 1966. Since then the Algarve has become a year-round land of sporting promise for northern Europeans and, more recently, golfing snowbirds from across the Atlantic.

The Algarve has long deserved to stretch beyond its traditional European market and its historical significance and pristine beauty are now being rewarded with a rapidly growing influx from the United States and Canada. But when you visit, you are buying into an ancient civilization and culture as well as the pleasure to be derived from leisure pursuits.

Faro, the regional capital, is not just the home of one of southern Europe’s busiest airports. Its 13th century cathedral, built over an old mosque (a reminder of 500 years of Moorish rule), dominates the old town, which is still surrounded by Roman walls. The central square used to be a Roman forum and other interesting buildings include the Episcopal palace, a 16th century convent (now an archaeological museum) and the Nosso Senhora do Carmo church with its elaborate gold-leaf woodwork. The Naval Museum next to the small boat basin showcases the region’s maritime history through an interesting selection of model boats and galleons.

Faro is also surrounded by the Ria Formosa, a nature reserve covering some 44,000 acres, where migrating sea birds find protected breeding places and many Northern Atlantic fish and other marine organisms gather to spawn. Livelihoods in this protected area tend to be earned in shellfish farming, small-scale fishing and the garnering of sea salt.

Along the coast to the west lie the towns of Lagos, Portimao and Albufeira, while the main population center to the east is Tavira. The principal highlights inland are the Moorish castle and underground cistern at Silves while further into the mountains there are the hot Roman springs of Monchique.

But golf is now very much the jewel in the Algarve’s crown as a tourist destination, and especially alluring is a string of 15 courses, old and new, spread out like pearls along the 15-mile coastline immediately west of Faro.

We start our golfing trail at the marina resort of Vilamoura where the sport arrived early in 1969 when the English designer Frank Pennink laid out the Old Course. This pine-clad gem, which meanders through mature, gently undulating woodland, received an extensive facelift from Martin Hawtree, another Englishman abroad, in 1996.

In the intervening years, Vilamoura has sprouted four more lots of 18 holes—Pinhal (1976), another Pennink production updated a decade later by Robert Trent Jones Sr.; Laguna (1990), designed by the American architect Joseph Lee and recently reopened after a refurbishment; Millennium (2000), a collaboration between Lee and Hawtree; and Victoria (2004), Arnold Palmer’s wetlands gem that has staged the Portugal Masters on the European Tour since 2007.

Watery graves, like this one beside the 18th green, are not uncommon on the Palmer-designed Oceanico Victoria course at Vilamoura

Victoria, the result of an investment approaching $20 million, has wide fairways in between its native carob and almond trees, and a generally flat terrain. But the sting in its tail is the amount of H2O that lurks throughout with the intention of punishing errant shots. A lengthy reign in the Algarve is assured for this imaginatively constructed layout where the natural lakes and waterfalls serve both as hazards and irrigation reservoirs. The Vilamoura courses are now owned by Oceanico Golf whose local portfolio also includes two relatively new courses, laid out in the hills a few miles inland at the Amendoeira Golf Resort. Designed by six times major champion Sir Nick Faldo and his former European Ryder Cup team-mate Christy O’Connor Jr. of Ireland, both opened for play late in 2008.

Golf at Vale do Lobo has a slight edge in terms of seniority over Vilamoura Old, its near neighbor, having been introduced at the heart of an exclusive residential community by Cotton towards the end of 1968. Since then it has been reworked by another American architect, Rocky Roquemore, into two 18-hole courses—the Royal and the Ocean.

The golfing terrain at Vale do Lobo, which is also home to the fabled 5-star Dona Filipa Hotel, varies from pine-flanked, rolling parkland to wind-lashed links. The latter is characterized by one breathtaking, much-photographed par-3, the 16th on the Royal. It is perched on the cliff’s edge, high above the voracious, foaming Atlantic waves, so in order to avert disaster the tee shot has to carry two ravines to reach a green 230 yards away.

Overall, Vale do Lobo, its undulating and narrow fairways mostly lined with umbrella pines and fig trees, presents a worthwhile challenge to golfers of all ability levels.

A couple of miles east of Vale do Lobo and less than a 10-minute drive from Faro airport is a sprawling residential resort with five strikingly different 18-hole layouts, four of them designed by Americans. The North and South courses at Quinta do Lago, with their generous fairways, wide greens, hilly terrain and sweeping views, are best navigated via a buggy due to the lengthy distances between greens and tees.

William Mitchell laid out the original 27 holes at Quinta do Lago in 1974 and his compatriots Lee and Roquemore came along 14 years later to build the fourth 9-hole loop. The North enjoys a picturesque, unspoiled setting, but the South, which has staged eight Portuguese Opens (it was here, back in 1989, that Colin Montgomerie claimed his first European Tour title), is possibly the more memorable to play, not least because of its spectacular bunkering. The par-3 15th, with a carry across a lake to reach a green shaded by an amphitheater of umbrella pines, certainly sticks in the mind along with the course’s four magnificent, ‘risk and reward’ par-5s.

The Algarve’s newest course, which opened just a year ago, is Quinta do Lago’s third. Designed by Portuguese architect Jorge Santana da Silva, Laranjal was originally an orange grove, so it’s no surprise its narrow rolling fairways are lined with mature orange trees, cork oaks and umbrella pines. With five par-5s and five par-3s, not to mention five shimmering lakes and well-defined greens that require both concentration and accuracy, Laranjal is without doubt an impressive and unusual addition to the Algarve’s golfing canon.

The other two courses in the Quinta complex are Ronald Fream’s Pinheiros Altos and San Lorenzo, another Lee-Roquemore production.

Pinheiros Altos, which dates from 1992, offers two distinctly different sets of nine holes—the front half follows hilly contours through pine forests while the back nine, by contrast, winds through the flatter landscape of the Ria Formosa valley.

After a quiet start, San Lorenzo bursts into life with a series of tricky holes

Despite being laid out on an almost grand scale with some generous fairways gently undulating between the mature pines, San Lorenzo (1988) is without doubt one of the most treacherously beautiful courses I have ever played. That said, it never fails to lift my spirits despite my inevitably dwindling ball count.

A mesmerizing blend of inland and water holes, San Lorenzo hosts thousands of nesting birds and remains a crucial port of call for countless more of their aquatic cousins when they make their annual winter pilgrimage to North Africa.

It starts fairly quietly but once you reach the par-3 5th the whole place opens up with stunning views towards the confluence of the Ria Formosa with the sea. The wetlands hugging 6th, 7th and 8th—two par-4s and a par-5—make these holes every bit as awkward to navigate as the infamous Bear Trap at PGA National in Florida. From that point on it’s a classic Man v Nature contest, culminating in a masterful par-4 closing hole with a water-flanked fairway which doglegs left towards a semi-island green.

Vila Sol, a 20-year-old Donald Steel design only a few miles inland, provides this vicinity with its sixth significant challenge, this time across 27 holes.

This British designer’s philosophy is to preserve the native vegetation and keep large-scale earth movements to the bare minimum by using the terrain he is given. Thus, having maintained much of the original topography of this undulating terrain, Steel created a lengthy and demanding front nine (Prime), but was able to ease up on the shorter back nine (Challenge) and on the third nine (Prestige) he added in 2000.

This has been but a snapshot of the golf on offer in the Algarve, a stretch of coastline that should carry a mandatory warning: Those in no mood to be besotted must turn back now because once you’re in it, you’re in love with it.

A comfortable climate (though visitors are advised to pack something warm and dry outside the summer months, just in case), a clean coastline with white beaches and red cliffs sheltered from the north by the Monchique Mountains, excellent food and the friendliest of natives are all excellent reasons to head for the Algarve.

And, of course, all that roadside pottery!