Living in southern Portugal since 2018, Mickael Carvalho shares his experience and hopes to inspire more people to take up the sport
– 28 October, 2024 | Text Maria Simiris | Photos João Lázaro/Open Media Group
Born in France to Portuguese parents, 34-year-old Mickael Carvalho first picked up a golf club aged just eight, in the south of Paris, where he lived for most of his life. Encouraged by a school friend, he soon discovered the sport that he now considers to be his passion, but it wasn’t until the age of 17 that he decided to fully commit to golf.
“I was at my first major competition, a national qualifying event. Whoever finished first in each class, which was my case, got to compete in the final. I succeeded in that. Then, with the level I reached in France, where I was ranked in amongst the top 500 players, I decided I wanted to play in international tournaments and study so I could coach,” he recalls.
Before that, Carvalho had a goal to fulfil: to try to be the best amateur player possible and reach the highest level.
“In my mind, only when I reached that level could I help others achieve the same. It wasn’t until I got my handicap to below zero that I thought I was ready to start coaching,” he points out.
He achieved this feat at the age of 24, when he decided to take the PGA certification course in 2014.
The 18-month training course meant that Mickael was able to coach anywhere in the world. After four years of coaching all types of players, including professionals in France, he decided to move to Portugal, specifically to the Algarve.
The decision had already been made a few years earlier, when he was in the region for the first time, taking part in the Professional Golf Tour.
“In 2016, I was playing in tournaments in the south of Spain, and I met a Portuguese lady who arranged for me to stay in one of her flats in Alvor so that I could take part in the Portuguese competition. As soon as I came, whilst I was at the tournaments, I tried to get to know the club directors and the reality of the sport in the Algarve. By the second year, people already knew me. Then, in 2018, Frederico Tito Champalimaud, [at the time] the director of Espiche Golf in Lagos, told me that he needed a certified professional coach who spoke at least three languages: English, French and Portuguese. I started there as a coach on May 1, 2019,” Carvalho recalls.
Three years later, Frederico Tito Champalimaud took over as director of Quinta da Ria, in Vila Nova de Cacela, and brought Mickael Carvalho along with him, who started coaching there in November 2022, where he still is today.
With an average of five hours of lessons a day, the coach explains that 45% of his students are French, 45% are native English speakers, and the rest are Portuguese and Spanish.
“Whether they’re children, adults or seniors, I always try to make the lessons fun to encourage them to come back and train,” he says.
According to Mickael, since he started working in the Algarve, the summer of 2024 was the best of his career, with an increase in the number of American students.
When asked what sets him apart from other coaches, Carvalho says that he sees himself as proactive. “Every month I organise a golf-related trip with my students, and they all receive a monthly newsletter from me. I go after the students, I train here on the course every day and I put passion into my lessons. This has led to an increase in the number of clients. Seeing the coach himself practising motivates them more,” he says.
For the future of Quinta da Ria, the golfer has several plans: “I want to start preparing elite teams, both adults and children. That’s what I’m working on now. Then I want to draw more children into the sport, increase the number of students and raise their level. I’d also like to create partnerships with federations in other countries for student exchanges, so that the best in other countries know that at Quinta da Ria there is a golf-teaching professional who is eager to help develop the swing of every golfer,” he explains.
Mickael Carvalho is also in talks with the Portuguese Golf Federation, with the goal of “creating a place in the Algarve to train the country’s elite, a High-Performance Centre for example, where the national team can train. There are centres in Lisbon and Porto but not here yet”, he adds.
Regarding the biggest differences between golf in the Algarve and in France, Mickael highlights the quality of our courses.
“In all aspects; both the courses and the training facilities. I’m not even talking about the climate, because it’s identical in the south of France, but there, you’d have to go to private courses or big-name ones to find courses of a similar quality to those in the Algarve. That’s just to get the same quality of play. In my opinion, the worst pitch in the Algarve would be considered good in France, in terms of direct comparison. Here I can play anywhere, and the course is always perfect,” he says.
On a personal level, Mickael Carvalho intends to continue living and working in the Algarve, but he still makes a point of competing: “Every day I train, whether on the course, running or in the gym, for an average of six to seven hours. On the course, I train for two to three hours every day. When I wasn’t coaching here, I used to participate in around 15 tournaments a year, but now the goal is different: to play in two or three Portuguese competitions,” he says. That’s because a dream remains to be fulfilled: “I want to try to play in the US Open and the British Open. I’d like that to happen next year or in two years’ time. It’s an experience I want to fulfil and that’s what I’m working towards,” he says.
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