Old Course Vilamoura Golf
The umbrella pines here are old enough to have watched Frank Pennink stake out the fairways in 1969, and they still define the course — tall, rust-barked, throwing shade across the turf in long morning lines. The Old Course at Vilamoura is the Algarve's original resort layout, and after more than five decades it carries that seniority lightly: measured, pine-framed, with a slope rating of 138 that rewards patience over power.
The one pond on the course appears at the fourth hole, a par 3 played clean over the water. It's a quiet test, typical of a layout that asks you to think rather than swing hard. The clubhouse sits close by, its British-inspired gastropub an odd and somehow comfortable fit for a Portuguese afternoon.
💛 What travellers fall for
Regulars book tee times in October or March, when the greens are in their best condition and the course isn't at capacity. Most come back for hole four — that pond shot lingers. After the round, the gastropub's Portuguese dishes tend to outlast the British staples on the table.
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Book directly at the providerHow Old Course Vilamoura Golf came to be
Frank Pennink, the English golfer-turned-architect who shaped several European courses in the postwar decades, designed the Old Course and it opened in 1969 — making it one of the earliest purpose-built resort courses on the Algarve. It hosted the Portuguese Open in 1976, a marker of early prestige.
By the mid-1990s the course needed reinvention. Martin Hawtree, another British golf architect, carried out a substantial remodel and the course reopened in 1997 with a new clubhouse and a revised layout — the fifth and eighteenth holes were swapped, quietly altering the rhythm of a round. Dom Pedro Hotels & Golf Collection took ownership in 2016, and in 2025 the course was named Portugal's Best Golf Course at the World Golf Awards.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October) offer the most reliable conditions: warm without the inland heat spikes that can push July and August above 35°C. Winter rounds are mild and often clear, though December brings the most rain; if you don't mind the occasional grey morning, green fees tend to be lower and the course quieter.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.