67 came across it around 15 years ago, when Portugal was bidding for the Ryder Cup that was eventually awarded to France and played at Le Golf National. The Torre site, which at the time was owned by Banco Espiritu Santu, the country’s largest bank, was proposed as the location for the Cup, and the American architect Tom Fazio hired to design a course. That, of course, came to nothing, though as it happened, Fazio would eventually design a course just down the road, at the CostaTerra development by American firm Discovery Land. Torre sat undeveloped, until the entire Comporta project was acquired by Portuguese firm Vanguard Properties. Vanguard contracted with Kidd (and contractor Conor Walsh, Kidd’s shaper on the original build) to finish the Dunas course, and once that opened to great acclaim, turned its attention back to Torre. Torre is not, it should be said, as dramatic a property as that occupied by Dunas. But that should not be taken as saying it is bland, for it is not. It is a site that any golf architect would give something very precious – left arm, first born child, dog – to work on. Like the whole of the Troia peninsula, it is pure sand, and it has beautiful contour, never flat but rarely too extreme for golf. Developer Vanguard resolved to take a rather different tack from the Dunas course at Torre, hiring Sergio Garcia as signature designer, and NCM Network, the firm whose main design brand is in the name of José María Olazábal, to do the actual work. NCM is now a substantial operation, with five architects and a lot of projects in a wide range of locations; Icelandic architect Snorri Vihljalmsson was the point man here at Torre. Signature designers rarely play that active a role in the actual architecture of a course, but here Garcia had one key influence: in homage to his favourite course, Valderrama, he said “ It is a site that any golf architect would give something very precious to work on” TORRE AT COMPORTA Photo: James Hogg The Torre course has been built on a sandy site to the north of the club’s Dunas layout
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