European Tour Insider: Event goes island hopping

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The Madeira Islands Open is migrating to Porto Santo this year after being held for years on Madeira.

Editor's note: Nick Dye is going to be giving PGATOUR.COM viewers an inside look at what's happening on the European Tour. Dye, who works with European Tour Radio, will be at more than 30 events this year and will file weekly columns on Wednesdays.

The Insider is not meant to be a travel guide, but please indulge me, because the European Tour is treading new ground this week.

The Madeira Islands Open is a long established Tour event, but it has a fresh, fascinating and hard-to-get-to venue this year on the tiny island of Porto Santo.

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Porto Santo is the northernmost and easternmost island of the Madeira Archipelago in the northern Atlantic Ocean. Madeira and Porto Santo are the only inhabited islands in the chain.

Madeira is famous for its wine and cake. It's also famed for its beauty and greenery with abundant botanical gardens and superb scenic walks among wildflowers on lush hillsides. It's a Portuguese island, though it is in fact closer to Casablanca in Morocco than Lisbon.

Porto Santo, on the other hand, is known for one of the best beaches in Europe, what brochures call five miles of "golden therapeutic sands." The island is not much longer as a whole, and it's touted as a growing sporting complex with the spectacular Seve Ballesteros-designed golf course in addition to horseback riding, tennis, water sports and paragliding centers.

The Porto Santo course is a venue that promises not to harbor the frustrations of recent years when the Madeira Islands Open was played at Santo da Serra. It could be beautifully hot and sunny on the coast, but that course was more than halfway up a mountain, where it was plagued by low clouds and fog and was regularly bitterly cold. Not to mention, the calf muscles were tested on precipitous fairways.

BACK HOME

This is the first European Tour event of the season actually in Europe, but it's a long way from the mainland -- and I'll say again, it's difficult to get to.

For most players, it's a flight into Lisbon first, then another to Funchal on Madeira's main island, and then, after a long wait, there's a 15-minute hop over to Porto Santo.

So for me and the players who had to fly via London, it meant around 10 hours traveling for what is essentially a fairly short distance. That's nothing compared to Australian Matt Millar, though.

For Millar, the travel itinerary read: Canberra to Sydney (where his luggage got mislaid) to Abu Dhabi to London Heathrow to London Gatwick to Lisbon to Funchal to Porto Santo. Whew!

MAJOR CHANCES

Despite being one of the smaller tournaments, commanding few big names and a less bountiful purse than most weeks, the Madeira Islands Open is an event held in great esteem and affection by many, and there are plenty who consider it like a major.

Millar, for instance, has been back through q-school to gain his playing rights the last couple of years. He knows a win here will give him the exemption that will sort his career. Challenge Tour players -- the second rung of the European Tour -- know this represents a big opportunity, as well as one of the best paydays of the season.

It's an event that some of the favorites play with a win very much in focus -- Bradley Dredge, Niclas Fasth, Anthony Wall and Damien McGrane, for instance. They feel it's a huge chance against a weaker field than usual.

AIKEN TO WIN

Thomas Aiken is also considered one of the favorites. The South African will have had one of the longest trips to get here and is no doubt still on a high after his tremendous and unexpected top-10 finish at the World Golf Championships-CA Championship in Florida. It's certainly not about the money compared to his lucrative earnings of last week, rather very much about securing his future.

Check out the putting tips Aiken's been offering on europeantour.com. The Genworth Financial Statistics that every Tour member studies show Aiken is atop one putting category and second in another.

"Putting is purely feel," Aiken says. "Find a putter that you like, one that sits square and one that you like the look of, and you will have a better chance of getting the ball in the hole. Just stick to feel and don't get too technical."

HOME HOPES

Madeira is the first of two Portuguese events in three weeks, and a chance for some domestic players to become home heroes.

Filipe Lima has been the main hope in recent years as the only Portuguese player on Tour and a former winner of the St. Omer Open. Of course, he was officially French when he won that event; Lima was born in Versailles, but he then elected to adopt his parents' nationality.

However, 17-year-old amateur Pedro Figueiredo is the big hope for the future. The junior Ryder Cup player has won a series of significant amateur titles and has a strong mentality that belies his age. Locals suggest he has the promise shown by Spanish neighbors Ballesteros and Sergio Garcia in their teenage years, and while technically there's room for improvement, his attitude is spot on.

Figueiredo had invitations from nine U.S. universities, and he is weighing his considerable options.