On day two in Vilamoura I played Dom Pedro’s Laguna Course. On the drive from the hotel to the golf course you can already see significant parts of Laguna here and there from the road, the impression on the golf course however is completely different.

The Dom Pedro Laguna Course shares the clubhouse with the Millennium Course and No. 1 and 9 are directly next to each other. Get ready for the immediate tester of your game: No.1, a par 5, is almost at the highest point of the course and requires some real driving skills. On the right there’s a bunker and adjoining villas and on the left you have the range. Despite that, you could still go ahead and place your ball well with a solid 3-wood, because only 480m in length from the whites make a 2nd shot attack possible, if it weren’t for the many bunkers around the green.

From No. 3 onwards you know why the place is called Laguna. A medium long dogleg right with a huge bunker to the left and water to the right is only fun when you hit the fairway. Through a small tunnel we reach the tee of the probably most beautiful par 3 of the Laguna Course. 190m from the whites and 150m from the yellow tee box separate you from a birdie put on the really super fast greens.

The tee box is extremely impressive and shows the quality of this golf course. Generally the tee boxes are all absolutely even and well maintained, just like the rest of the place. You just have to be careful to keep your scorecard clean with all the water and so many bunkers. In addition, there are these really small, narrow greens that don’t like to give you the chance of shooting birdies. I guess the good old bogey is nothing bad on the Dom Pedro Laguna Course.

Between hole 12 and 15 the course is particularly nice but again difficult, because you’re constantly playing around water hazards. In any case, make sure you bring enough balls, especially for No. 14. With only 334m off the whites and 318m from the yellow tee it’s not particularly long, but the dogleg, the water hazard on the right and out of bounds on the left combined with the narrow fairways demand all the precision you have left in the bag.

My personal signature hole is undoubtedly No. 4, the most beautiful par 3 of the Dom Pedro Laguna Golf Course. What’s also really positive and somehow exotic are the many palm trees that line the fairways over and over again to further intensify your holiday feeling during the round. For all those who want to know the exact data, here are a couple of the hard facts:

Length: 6121m at Par 72, Course Rating 72,6 / Slope Rating 133. The Architekt was Joseph Lee and the course was opened in 1990.