The next three holes are hard to the Strait, with a series of marshes, heaths, scraggly grasses and the occasional tree down the right-hand sides. The 9th hole, 565/535 yds par 5, requires one to tack through the wind all the way without getting blown into the knee-high heather (“ljung” in Swedish) to the right…
Add to that, another green is obliquely oriented, which always making judging carry distances a bear…
The 10th is a gentle dogleg left 420/400 yd par-4, but one must challenge this bunker on the left to get the best angle into the green, which banks hard right-left…
Of course, the wind blows hard left-right typically, which makes getting tight to, or over (235 yd carry from the tips), this bunker a greater task…
The final hole in this trio is the 205/180 yd 11th, again with great elasticity along a RTJ-like runway tee to lengthen or shorten the distance…
One also gets a glimpse of the land to where we are headed next, the safety and solitude of the forest!
The prevailing breeze is pushing everything down and to the right where the nastiest heather and taller grass await. The now-quiet shipmaking yards of southern Sweden are evident in the distance…
Heading back across the road and uphill to the final seven, Barseback calms one down with perhaps the perfect “breather” hole, a 525/495 yd par-5. However, even this twisting hole has an uphill drive and then another uphill second, but with the twist of a severe turn to the left for the final 60 yds. My dead solid 2nd shot rolled over into the right rough, which also happens to be a reasonable angle for the approach into this green, viewed from the back left…
At this point the next 3-4 holes drift comfortably, but somewhat unspectacularly through the forest, not unlike a North Carolina feel to many of the holes, such as the 430/401 yd par-4 14th…
The final burst out of the woods back down to the sea, however, give one quite the jolt as these also turn back into the westerly wind. The breeze pushes one hard down to the right of the dogleg-left par 5 16th, 540/508 yds….
Because of the tree line and chute effect of this hole, and the next, the winds swirl around, but tend to shoot balls up into the air in a big way. Although the rains in this area of Sweden had been substantial the week before, the areas in front of the greens did still have some bounce to them, and I suspect can be quite a bit firmer in the right time…
From behind the 16th green…
The 17th hole apparently is often judged the “prettiest” hole in Sweden, and indeed when played into the setting sun is quite dramatic. There is a definite Spyglass Hill feel to this section of the course. At 430/390 yds par-4, the hole seems tailor-made for a stinging tee shot…
…followed by a deft approach to yet another of the hourglass shaped greens on the Barseback Masters Course…
The home hole is something of a let-down as an uphill dogleg-right 408/385 yd par-4, but the green is perched in a clearing looking across at the clubhouse and down over the short course…
The greens fees on the Masters Course are 700 SKR, or again about $105 US, and the club is located north of Malmo on the motorway toward Helsingborg, again about 30-40 minutes from the Kastrup airport, east of Copenhagen. I hope you have enjoyed these pictures of little-discussed courses on GCA, and perhaps are intrigued by a possible visit to southern Sweden in the future. I think Halmstad may be the best course in terms of overall shot requirements, but Falsterbo is certainly the one which, I think, “stirs the soul”. Barseback is a fine “hybrid”, I think, encompassing fine elements of three distinct course styles, without being outstanding in any one of the three. I would be curious as to your collective thoughts.