The Penina (now known as the Sir Henry Cotton Championship Course) was the first resort golf course to be built in Portugal and therefore is unquestionably where golf started in this southern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Three times British Open champion, the late Sir Henry Cotton was encouraged to visit and lay out a course over a former rice field. On an unpromising wet, treeless site, Cotton grasped the opportunity to renew the British connection with golf in the country that had been established in the 19th century.