5 golf cities you have probably never considered

Everyone lands in Faro and turns left towards Vilamoura and Quinta do Lago. Lagos sits the other way, at the western end of the Algarve, and it is a different holiday altogether: cliffs instead of resort strips, a proper old town, and golf with room to breathe.

What it opens up: Palmares, running down towards the beach with sea views from most of the round. Boavista, laid out through the hills just outside town. Espiche, quieter and greener than either.

3 very different courses, all within a short drive, in a town you would happily spend a week in even without the golf.

Everyone flies to Barcelona. Girona sits an hour north, has its own airport, and puts you right in the middle of the best golf in Catalonia rather than an hour and a half away from it.

What it opens up: Camiral, whose Stadium course is regularly rated among the finest in Spain. Empordà, with a links layout and a forest layout on the same estate. Peralada, closer to the French border and well worth the extra 20 minutes.

Girona itself is a beautiful medieval city, so the evenings look after themselves. This is the trip people take once and then repeat.

Everyone who flies into Lisbon stays in Lisbon. Drive 90 minutes up the coast and you reach a stretch of golf that most visitors never hear about, in towns worth a trip on their own.

Nazaré is world famous, just not for golf. It is where surfers travel from across the world to ride the giant winter waves. Peniche is the other surf town, on a headland with the Berlengas islands offshore. And Óbidos is a walled medieval town that looks like a film set and takes about an hour to fall for.

What it opens up: West Cliffs, dramatic dune golf running along the Atlantic. Praia D'El Rey, a long standing favourite mixing clifftop holes with pine. And the courses around Óbidos itself.

Golf in the morning, and in the afternoon you can go and watch the ocean do something genuinely astonishing.

This one is different. Alicante is not an unknown name, it is one of the busiest golf gateways in Spain. But almost nobody stays there. Golfers land, collect a hire car and drive somewhere else entirely, which means both the city and the cluster of courses just south of it get skipped by the very people flying into them.

What it opens up: Las Ramblas, playing through ravines and pine, where you leave the driver in the bag far more often than you expect. La Finca, a course with real character and a layout that keeps asking questions. And Villamartín, a long standing favourite that has been quietly excellent for decades.

3 courses within easy reach of each other, a proper Spanish city on the doorstep, and green fees that tend to sit below what you would pay further west.

Huelva sits between Seville and the Portuguese border, in a stretch of coast that most golfers pass through without stopping. It is the only base on this list that gives you 2 countries.

What it opens up: El Rompido and Islantilla on the Spanish side, both long standing favourites with a loyal following. Cross the border and you reach the eastern Algarve, with Quinta da Ria and Monte Rei, the latter regularly named among the very best courses in Portugal.

Worth planning for: the Portuguese courses are a genuine drive from Huelva rather than a hop, so build them in as a day out rather than a morning round.

None of them is undiscovered. They are all real places with real airports and real courses, and plenty of golfers know them well.

What they share is that they sit in the shadow of a bigger name. And that shadow is exactly where the value hides: the same quality of golf, at prices that have not been pushed up by fame, on tee sheets that are not fought over months in advance.

It is the same principle that turns up again and again in golf travel. Stay in the famous region, just look 30 minutes to the side of where everyone else is looking.

Pick your city, look at the top rated courses within reach, and hold your tee times early, because the best mornings still go first. You can book them now and pay nothing until the day you play.

Leading Courses makes planning your next round seamless by connecting directly to tee sheets at hundreds of golf courses worldwide for instant, real-time bookings. Every tee time booked in Europe comes with a Best Price Guarantee, built on rates negotiated directly with partner golf clubs. To make your trip completely hassle-free, bookings always include free cancellation and modification, a convenient Pay Later option, and the ability to reserve a buggy or rental clubs in the exact same step. Backed by authentic community reviews, Leading Courses ensures you can discover, compare, and lock in your perfect tee time with total confidence.