Faldo's Portuguese paradise

LONDON, England (CNN) -- It takes a brave man to put his name to a new golf course in the middle of Portugal's prime golfing destination, let alone one that's mostly flat and prone to flooding.

But this isn't any man. The winner of six Major tournaments Nick Faldo isn't afraid of challenges.

"That's my nature," Faldo says. "I don't do things by halves, and if I get a good piece of land, I would lean on the owners to say 'Well, you've got something special here, let's take it to as good as we can do it.'"

The Faldo course at the Amendoeira resort in Portugal's Algarve opened on the weekend with a lavish gala dinner, Pro-Am tournament and charity event, featuring a matchplay competition played by some of the sport's big names, including Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood.

As it's been open for less than a week, it has still to be tested by the majority of the top players; and even those who took part in the matchplay only had the chance to play on three of the course's holes.

In a statement released by the Oceanico Group -- the company which owns the resort -- Russian Open winner Mikael Lundberg described the course as "very testing," and English golfer Simon Dyson, who tied for sixth at the 2007 PGA Championship said "For a new course, I thought the condition and layout was excellent. The greens were extremely challenging,"

This is certainly not a standard 18 holes of resort golf, but a tough championship course. With a par five hole on the back nine that comes in just short of 700 yards, it's anything but easy.

Advancements in technology and training have changed the way course designers structure a hole. Where in the past not even the pros were driving the ball further than about 260 yards, players can now reach distances well over 300 yards, meaning that older courses are less of a challenge.

Faldo's course has bunkers and hazards positioned to cause problems for anyone, whether they are the big hitters or the more traditional 260 yard drivers -- as Faldo says to "create an equal challenge to all of them."

CNN's Living Golf caught up with Nick Faldo to take a guided tour of the site and to get an insight into how the English golfer went about tackling this challenging project. Watch the video of our Faldo interview »

"I think I owe it to the developer or the owner to say 'We can take this to this level; we don't need to stop just here,'" he told CNN. "Plus for my own reputation, I want to push it so people go 'Hmm, that was a hell of a course.' Usually you have to lean a little bit towards the hard."

Faldo has already completed 18 courses around the world and has another 14 in the pipeline. This is his first in Portugal's golf hot-spot.

"I've had a genuine passion to design golf courses since I was 18," he told CNN. "[As a designer] you see more, you take more in, you're given a new challenge... And sometimes it doesn't always [work]. There's no straight line to the top of Everest, you have to find a route. I think that's the fun of it."

Faldo's is one of two 18-hole courses at the Amendoeira resort; the other was designed by Europe's 1975 and 1989 Ryder Cup team member, Irishman Christy O'Connor Jr., another big name in golf design with more than 30 sites across Europe.

Faldo admits that creating the course was something of an "engineering battle," and though it is now listed on the Oceanico Web site as "undulating," a lot of the contours on the course had to be added by the design team.

"We were given this valley, which was basically dead flat; literally a half a meter of movement in nearly a mile... And then you have issues of flood plains," he told CNN.

Faldo's landscaping team spent months sculpting the land to turn this flat tract of land into a course that offers peaks, troughs and sand traps, making it a better golf terrain.

Portugal's Algarve region is particularly popular with golfers. A wide range of courses cater for differing styles and skill-levels. It remains to be seen whether Faldo's design can stand out from the crowd.

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