- Terras da Comporta held a two-day event this month to mark the first anniversary of The Torre Course and the third of The Dunas Course.
- A 92-player field played a shotgun tournament on Torre and competed for the Claude Berda Cup on Dunas.
- Sergio Garcia, who designed Torre, took part in a live-streamed Q&A by video link.
Terras da Comporta has marked the birthdays of its two courses with an invitation-only, two-day event south of Lisbon. Sergio Garcia was among the guests celebrating his own design.
The Torre Course was officially opened on October 4, 2025. Dunas opened for play on June 1, 2023, and was inaugurated that October. That makes this October Torre’s first anniversary and Dunas’s third.
A 92-player field of VIPs, partners and invited guests, led by Henrique Rodrigues da Silva, CEO of Vanguard Properties, began with a shotgun tournament on Torre. Garcia then joined a live-streamed question-and-answer session by video link.
Play moved to Dunas on the second day, where the field competed for the Claude Berda Cup. The trophy is named for the Vanguard Properties founder, who died at the end of last year. A dinner and prize-giving closed the event, which the resort intends to hold every year.
Rodrigo Ulrich, golf general manager for Vanguard Properties, said both courses are busier than ever.
“Events like this give us an opportunity to reflect on just how far we’ve come on the international golf stage in a short space of time,” he said.
Two courses, two years apart
Dunas is David McLay-Kidd’s first course in mainland Europe. It is a par-71 laid across 84 hectares of sandy terrain on the edge of the Sado Estuary Nature Reserve and measures 6,646 metres from the back tees. It was named Europe’s Best Golf Course at the 2025 World Golf Awards. Earlier this year it went straight in at number one in both Top100GolfCourses.com’s Portugal list and Golf Digest‘s Best Courses in Portugal.
Torre is a par-72 of 7,200 yards. Garcia drew on his fondness for Real Club Valderrama, pairing wide landing areas and sweeping waste sand with small, well-defended greens. It was named World’s Best New Course at the 2025 World Golf Awards within weeks of opening. It missed out on this year’s Golf Digest Portugal ranking only because it had not gathered enough rater ballots.
When Peter Ellegard played Torre just after its opening, it did not yet have its own clubhouse. He singled out the double-dogleg par-5 11th as its standout hole.
Last month the estate also made its debut in GOLF.com’s Top 100 Golf Resorts in the World.
Much of the wider resort is still to come. Vanguard Properties bought Terras da Comporta in 2019. The estate covers 365 hectares at Torre and around 1,011 hectares at Dunas, eight kilometres to the south beside Praia do Pego beach. Plans include plots for hotels and residential and tourist condominiums, along with tennis, padel, pickleball and horse riding.
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Simon Bale
Simon Bale is the publisher of Golf Today. A low single-figure handicap golfer, he was previously a major shareholder and course reviewer for Top100GolfCourses.com for over a decade, starting in 2010. Through this role, he developed extensive knowledge of golf course design and architecture while playing more than 300 courses worldwide.