TROIA GOLF - 16 POINTS

Troia is totally unlike any other Portuguese golf course I have seen. Whereas others are often lush, manicured to within an inch of their lives and run like military operation, Troia is none of those things!

The course is on a peninsula 45 minutes south of Lisbon by car, and then another half an hour by ferry. When this area was developed some forty years ago it was probably envisaged that this would be the Hamptons of Lisbon or the like. The development around here has been fairly slow and you do feel like you are quite out of the way of things here. As a result the course doesn’t get anywhere like the amount of play of the Algarve courses or those like Praia d’el Rey to the north.

There was an ever so slighty ‘faded' grandeur’ feeling on arrival. The car park was large, dusty and empty (I was playing at 9am in fairness) and the clubhouse fairly deserted. The driving range was pretty basic, there was a man chipping range balls back from an adjoining fairway, but it absolutely served its purpose.

The style of golf at Troia is similar in some ways to the Australian sand belt. The fairways run pretty fast and rather than running off to rough you will likely have a few yards of sandy ground before reaching heavier vegetation. The sand is softer than in Australia which means that if you run off the fairway you may find yourself in quite a heavy sandy lie which makes forward progress tough. No complaints there though - you just should keep it on the fairways I guess!

This is a Robert Trent Jones Senior layout and some of his hallmarks are evident. You will find it very hard to run the ball up onto a green - especially on the front 9. If you are short then expect to find a bunker awaiting you. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a course with quite as many bunkers in front of greens!

The greens themselves are generally in the small side, only a couple are really postage stamps but these aren’t big targets to hit.
Similarly, the fairways aren’t the widest you’ll see in the world but the absence of real rough helps make them not too intimidating. Doglegs abound though so positioning from the tee is important.

Conditioning here has been a challenge however when I played in February 2020 the greens were very good, running at a good pace (but not stupidly so) and true. The fairways are based on pure sand and were running fast but had clearly suffered a little in places and were burnt out still. To be honest it didn’t really matter to me at all and I like the ‘brown’ look but it may be an issue in summer months.

The course begins probably a little bit more quirky than it is further on so hang in there! There are fairway trees on both the 1st and 3rd that are reminiscent of another Trent Jones design, Valderrama, in terms of their impact on playability. The second is an excellent par 3 - 180 yards + and very well bunkered. The third hole is oft-quoted as one Trent Jones’ favourite par fours. It is a sign of what is to come, a dogleg requires a well placed tee shot before a mid iron to a well protected green on the ocean side of the property.

The fourth is again on the ocean-side of the property, another very good par 3 with the pin just on the green with what looks like a precipice short of the green. It may only have played 130 yards but really makes you think.

The rest of the front nine moves back inland and is a fairly similar run of par 4s, up and down through the pines before returning to the clubhouse after 9. This really is a course where you need to be dialled in with both your yardages and distances for your approach shots. Anything not spot on will likely find sand or a tough position.

I preferred the back 9 as some of the greens opened up a little more. The ground is sandy throughout but only the long par 4 16th and beautiful par 3 17th get you close to the water again, and even then you are still a couple of hundred yards from the coast.

The finish may be the strongest part of the course, after the strong 16th and 17th comes a testing par 5 which has both a dogleg and bunkers in front of the green - much like the rest of the course!!

While I may have majored here on the requirements for accuracy this is still quite a playable course. There aren’t really any intimidating tee shots and the greens are generally pretty straightforward. A couple make you think for sure and you want to be on the right tier but there’s nothing there to give you sleepless nights.

It’s also a very pleasant walk. Unlike so many Portuguese courses there are no horrible walks from green to tee, rather you will step from one green pretty much always onto the next tee which makes for a lovely rhythm to your round. Furthermore, this course doesn’t get particularly heavy play so you are likely to get around in a good time.

I think my expectations coming into Troia may have been set a little high. I had read about this as a top 10 on Europe course and Portugal’s number 1 and I probably have it a notch below that. The ground is good, and the holes certainly pleasant but it never quite hit the heights for me to really rave about the course. I think that Trent Jones could have done a little more to use the fast running ground to give some more options for getting to the pin, instead the plethora of bunkers mean that the aerial route is usually the only one.

Having said that I do think this is a course worth seeing. It will give you a different challenge to anything else you’ll see on Europe really and if you go with your expectations in the right place I think you’ll definitely enjoy it. But for my money, Portugal has a couple of courses that stand a bit above it.

BOOKING THE COURSE

It takes a bit of a hunt to work out how to get the best deal at Troia. If you look on the website then you will see that it is €102 for 18 holes all year round. That’s a bit more than you may expect when you see the price of a round at West Cliffs or Praia d’El Rey. However, if you go to a tee time broker you will see that you can book times indirectly for cheaper. This does irk me a little. If you want to have a round of golf you should be able to book directly through the club’s website without missing out.

Unlike some other courses you can’t book ‘live’ through a tee time site but golfinportugal.com will contact them for you and book you a tee time for €65.

TOUR TIPS

You could stay on the peninsula if you fancy so you just have to get out of bed and go straight to the course on the day of play. I stayed at the Troia Design Hotel which was a 5 minutes drive away. It’s a swish designer hotel with a classy restaurant and nice looking bar area.

However, Troia itself probably isn’t a hotbed of nightlife and you may well be better served coming out from Lisbon for the day. You can either take an hour and a half driving from Lisbon - easy driving if a little boring - or drive to the suburb of Setubal and take a ferry. The car ferry is a very simple affair and takes under half an hour to get across to the Troia peninsula. It’s a straightforward process and a nice way to travel. Ferries leave every hour in the winter months and more frequently in the season.

In terms of other courses in the Lisbon area obvious candidates would Oitavos Dunes, half an hour to the west of Lisbon, and Praia d’El Rey and West Cliffs an hour to the north. I think the quality of golf here is consistently higher than that in the Algarve and you will find a much more authentic Portugal waiting for you too.

CONTACT DETAILS

Troia Resort
7570-789 Carvalhal GDL
Portugal

Tel - +351 265 494 024
Web - www.troiaresort.pt/
Email - golf@troiaresort.pt

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