On Portugal’s Silver Coast, four leading golf courses are proving that teamwork beats rivalry. By joining forces to promote their region north of Lisbon, Praia D’El Rey, West Cliffs, Royal Óbidos and Bom Sucesso are transforming an overlooked coastline into one of Europe’s most exciting golf destinations.
To many golf resort managers, the idea of promoting your competitors is counter-intuitive at best. An hour north of Lisbon, though, four very different 18-hole courses are making a strong case for collaboration over competition…
Golf in Portugal will always be synonymous with the juggernaut that is the Algarve. And with good reason – the quality and diversity on display in the nation’s southernmost region is the stuff of legend in the sport.
But you’d be foolish to overlook another sun-kissed patch of Portuguese seaside that just so happens to be a short journey from the capital. The Silver Coast takes its name from the shimmering colour the ocean takes on as the sun sets on the western horizon. That should tell you all you need to know about the natural beauty on offer here.
Though the Silver Coast technically stretches from Lisbon to Porto – a drive of about three hours – the region is home to four exceptional golf courses within a ten-kilometre radius of each other. Rather than view each other as bitter rivals, though, the quartet have teamed up in recent years to create a partnership that is equally beneficial to golfers as it is to themselves.
You have to go back almost three decades, to the opening of the eldest of the four courses, to understand the full story of the Silver Coast’s golf scene. Praia D’El Rey Marriott Golf & Beach Resort is a name that many golf lovers will already be familiar with and is certainly one of Portugal’s most high-profile non-Algarve courses. Opening in 1997, it, like many of the Iberian Peninsula’s most spectacular links-style layouts, is the handiwork of the prolific American architect, Cabell Robinson.
Two decades passed before Praia D’El Rey opened a second course just under three miles up the coast – a course that has quickly established itself as one of Europe’s best. One of many acclaimed designs by Cynthia Dye McGarey, who has been continuing the Dye family tradition of building world-class golf courses for decades, West Cliffs Ocean & Golf Resort is a stunning layout known for its unforgettable landscape. Sharing ownership, it was only natural that the two courses worked, and continue to work, in close proximity.
The relationship between Praia D’El Rey and West Cliffs laid bare the benefits of collaboration between two nearby golf courses and it raised a tantalising question: just how much more could be achieved by cooperating with other Silver Coast venues in a similar fashion? Ostensibly – at least according to many golf club managers you could ask – geographic proximity makes courses business rivals. And yet by adopting a different mindset, one of collaboration rather than competition, there is good reason to believe that this is not the case.
After all, to attract tourists to an area a destination really must be created.
That’s where Royal Óbidos Spa & Golf Resort enters the tale. With a course consistently rated amongst Portugal’s best since first opening in 2012 (the last ever designed by Seve Ballesteros), there was no question that Royal Óbidos was doing perfectly well on its own. But, seeing the opportunity to ascend to even greater heights, newly appointed golf director Pedro Castelo Branco got the ball rolling in 2021.
“I had known Francisco Cadete [at the time, the golf director at Praia D’El Rey and West Cliffs] for years, so when I arrived it was easy to sit with him and work out what we could do that was beneficial – not only to Royal Óbidos, but also in attracting more golfers to the region,” Castelo Branco said.
Completing the line-up is Guardian Bom Sucesso Resort, a parkland golf course a short drive inland from Royal Óbidos, but its elevated altitude still allows for plenty of excellent vistas. A common theme across the entire Silver Coast region is the influence of some remarkable course architects and Bom Sucesso is no different – Martin Ebert (the man responsible for making the Ailsa Course at Trump Turnberry what it is today, among other projects) laid down these fairways when he was working with Donald Steel.
The timing couldn’t have been better – golf participation boomed across Europe as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a trip to the Portuguese seaside was exactly what half the continent’s golfers were itching for. Suddenly there was a renewed focus from all four parties to market the region as a truly great golfing and cultural destination, which became almost as important as promoting their respective individual courses.
“I think the biggest challenge we face is ensuring golfers looking to visit Portugal want to stay in this fantastic region for longer,” said Tiago Monteiro, golf sales manager at both Praia D’El Rey and West Cliffs.
“Many arrive, play our two courses, and then head elsewhere – be it to Lisbon or The Algarve. The more we can spread the word that Portugal’s Silver Coast is a golf destination with such quality and varied courses, and that you can enjoy fantastic golf here for an incredibly reasonable stay and play price, I think we will see a lot more people choose and consider this area for a trip over the Algarve or the Lisbon area.”
Now, each resort allows visitors to select which of the four courses they wish to play during their trip, whether they are booking a stay in one of the two five-star hotels, villas or apartment accommodation. When a guest is interested in playing at Praia D’El Rey, for example, the resort makes no secret of the fact that there are three other courses in the area that are also well worth a visit. One could argue that there is a risk the occasional prospective visitor will decide they like the look of another course better.
Crucially, the collaboration also includes complimentary transfers between each resort. The cost and logistics of getting from, for example, Royal Óbidos to West Cliffs could be enough to put tourists off trying the latter course; solving that problem for guests proved to be a game changer.
According to Castelo Branco: “All the golf directors at the venues get along quite well, so it was easy to create the package after I arrived: to agree on the transfers, pricing, how we sell… it was a very simple process, and I think it really helped make us the destination that we are now.”
There can be no doubt that the collaboration has been a success. The numbers speak for themselves, as Castelo Branco explains.
“As a region and a destination, we are getting more and more people every year, more rounds are being booked. It’s very important to keep this trajectory going for bookings and to continue to work with each other.”
The Silver Coast golf project (at least in its current form) is still in its infancy, but it’s already proving an intriguing case study of the ways golf venues that would typically be considered rivals can blossom by joining forces – particularly in geographic regions that have otherwise been unjustly overlooked by the world of golf.
Understandably, golf clubs want players to choose them instead of other courses in the area, but perhaps there are some cases where that attitude is missing the forest for the trees.
As Monteiro puts it: “We know that the best way to ensure more golfers discover this fantastic area is to come together collectively, and we are super excited at what this partnership can not only do for each of us, but also for the wider region.
“By working closely together, we feel we can establish the region as one of the best golf destinations in continental Europe.”
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