Destination Golf Global (Spring 2020) * | Page 33

Golf Porto Santo 13 Golf Porto Santo 14 streets were lit up in a colourful display that attracted tourists like moths to a flame. In 2019, Madeira celebrated its 600th birthday and the lights are a reminder of the festivities. Take a walk along the promenade and soak it all in. changed. A completely new 27-hole course was introduced to the world. It is not often that you get to sleep in a golf clubhouse… or former clubhouse as is the case at the PortoBay Hotel on Madeira’s eastern flank. The hotel is high up in the mountains and it sits next door to the Santo do Serra Golf Club. When the club opened in 1937, this was the clubhouse. Today, the 1920s building is white and pale blue on the outside with many black and white photographs of golfers on the insides. It has been a boutique hotel for 20 years and it is classified as part of the region’s heritage. When Robert Trent Jones Senior arrived and redesigned the course in 1991, everything At 700 metres above sea level the lush greenery will tell you that there is plenty of moisture at Santo da Serra. Most of it comes in the form of early morning mist which can blanket the course. There was none the day we played and the course was on full display. The vista from the clubhouse is stunning and the walk to reach the Machico nine’s 1st tee shows off the woodland that frames the course below, with views stretching out to Ponta de São Lourenço, the most eastern tip of Madeira. The Machico and Desertas nines are the main event with some strong slopes to start and finish each nine, but it is the cliffs that drop 300 metres alongside and beyond the 2nd, 3rd and 4th holes that capture the imagination most… and form the course’s signature holes. Volume 5 • Issue 51 33