Alex Baker's TEG 9 began with the worst round Royal Óbidos has ever witnessed. His 115 gross on the Friday beat a previous course-worst of 108, a mark that had stood through six prior visits, and it was also the worst gross round of his own career at +43. Two holes did most of the damage: a nine at the 12th and an eleven at the 14th, the latter the worst he has ever scored relative to par on a par four. An eleven on a par four is not a golf hole. It is a project.

What followed was somebody else entirely. At Praia D'El Rey on the Saturday he posted 44 points and +27 gross, both personal bests, and he then reproduced both figures exactly in Monday's final round. The Monday 44 came despite quadruple bogeys at the 6th and the 15th, and that four-hole stretch from the 14th to the 17th that cost him eleven shots to par. He played his best golf and his worst golf in the same afternoon, and the card simply averaged them out.

The trip left him with course bests at both venues. His 100 at Praia D'El Rey improved on a previous best of 109 there and was nine strokes better than his last visit. His 102 at Royal Óbidos, in the third round, bettered the 108 he had managed on his only previous trip. Across the four rounds his gross total of +127 was the lowest he has recorded in a TEG, a personal best in the TEG 9 Green Jacket. All of it genuine progress. None of it available on the Friday.

Stuart Neumann took the TEG 9 Wooden Spoon for the second tournament running, finishing in Portugal on 127 Stableford points, bottom of the field after all four rounds and 16 adrift.

The pattern was set in the opening round at Royal Óbidos, where he managed 23 points and distributed them with no sense of fairness whatsoever. Seventeen on the front nine. Six on the back. An 11-point gap between two halves of the same round, played consecutively, by the same person. There was nothing there to build on.

There were better passages later. In the third round, back at Royal Óbidos, he picked up nine points across holes 6 to 8, three points on each, and then 12 more in a four-hole run from the 10th, holding a point a hole through two bogeys and two pars. That round produced a gross 98, one stroke better than the 99 he had posted on his only previous visit to the course in TEG 7, and his best score at Royal Óbidos.

His strongest stretch came on the final day at Praia D'El Rey, where holes 11 to 15 yielded 16 points, the run built on four holes without dropping a shot to par and a birdie at the 13th. He also signed for 98 there, though that was some way off his form on the same course in TEG 7, when he had gone round in 84, 14 strokes fewer.

The improvement was real. He got better every time out and finished last after every round anyway. The Spoon was never in doubt, and it never left the room.

David Mullin won the TEG 9 Green Jacket, his seventh, with a gross total of +67, ten clear of Jon Baker. It is the lowest gross total recorded in TEG history and Mullin's own career best.

The tone was set on the opening day at Royal Óbidos, where Mullin shot 87 to set a course record. The previous mark, across six prior visits by the field, was 90, which was also the best Mullin had managed there himself. Three strokes better than his last visit, it was a course personal best as well as a record.

The four rounds were not flawless, and it would be a disservice to the man to pretend otherwise. In the third round, back at Royal Óbidos, he ran up a nine at the par-four 10th, a quintuple bogey and the worst he has posted on a par four. He then opened the final round at Praia D'El Rey with an eight at the 1st, which is a bold way to begin a coronation. He recovered from both with the bearing of someone who had never entertained the alternative. At Praia D'El Rey he played the 2nd, 3rd and 4th in par, then took nine Stableford points from three straight pars at the 7th, 8th and 9th.

Baker's runner-up finish came with a personal-best gross total of +77, and his own course best of 89 at Royal Óbidos, nine strokes better than his previous visit there. It was not close to enough.

Jon Baker's Royal Óbidos began with the best golf he has played there. His opening 89 was a course personal best, nine strokes better than his previous visit to the Seve Ballesteros parkland layout in TEG 7, where his best had been 98. It came despite a quadruple-bogey 9 at the last, a par five off stroke index 4, which suggests the other seventeen holes were doing considerable work on his behalf.

The return to Óbidos in round three ran the same script at speed. Baker took 16 points from the opening five holes, a run built on four pars and a birdie at the second, and reached the turn ten points clear of what the back nine would eventually hand him. He finished with 34 points, 22 over gross.

The damage sat in three holes. Double bogey at the 10th, a 9 at the par-five 11th, another double at the 12th. Eight shots dropped in a row and three consecutive holes without a net par. He did not restrict the habit to Óbidos: a 7 at the par-three 14th at Praia D'El Rey in round two, and another 9 at Praia's 17th, the hardest hole on the card, in the final round.

Even so, his gross total of +77 was the lowest he has recorded in a TEG, a personal best in the TEG 9 Green Jacket standings. A career best, assembled largely out of nines.

Gregg Williams spent TEG 9 assembling holes that other men encounter only while asleep. It began at Royal Óbidos in round one, where he took nine at the par-three 15th, six over par and a personal worst against par. At Praia D'El Rey the next day he ran up a 10 at the ninth, another six over. Back at Óbidos in round three, the 15th found him a second time, this time for a seven. Then, in the final round, the par-five seventh at Praia D'El Rey produced an 11. Six over again, and the largest single number of his four days. All four were worth precisely nothing in Stableford terms, which at least lent them a certain consistency.

He had company. Jon Baker signed for three nines: at the par-five 18th in round one, the 11th in round three, and the 17th in the final round, stroke index one, each a quadruple bogey. David Mullin contributed a quintuple-bogey nine at the 10th at Óbidos in round three, his own worst hole relative to par.

The oddity is that the ledger did not derail Williams. He finished with a gross total of +115, the best figure of his career in the TEG 9 Green Jacket standings, and his 97 at Royal Óbidos was a course best, three strokes better than his previous visit there. The books balanced. Nobody is quite sure how.