Some weeks ago I was lucky enough to play two rounds on a newly opened German links course by the name of Budersand. The course is to be found on the southern part of North Sea Island of Sylt in a small village called Hörnum.
Sylt is a 38km (23 miles) long Island currently covered by 4 golf courses. Given the fact that large parts of the island are protected nature land is scarce and expensive. Therefore we will most probably not see any new golf courses on the island within the near future, especially as two of the existing layouts have just been or are just being extended from 9 to 18 holes. The courses on the island are:
Marine-Golfclub Sylt. Used to be a rather simple 9-hole course reopened 1979 adjacent to Westerland airport using a stretch of land already occupied by a RAF golf course during the 1950s recently redesigned and extended to 18 holes by the Scottish architect Kenneth J. Moody introducing linksstyle features such as pot bunkers
Golfclub Morsum – a 1964 9-hole layout by Bernhard von Limburger which is just being extended to 18 holes by the German Architect practise Städler Golf Courses – construction started in 2008
Golf-Club Sylt – more than 20 years ago the Anglo-Swiss architect Donald Harradine designed a quite charming 18-hole golf course on an otherwise completely flat piece of land.
The latest addition to Golf on the island is called Budersand:
This course is the first true 18-holes Links golf course in Germany and it is also the first full course designed by Rolf-Stephan Hansen, an well experienced landscape architect born on the Island of Sylt. Rolf-Stephan is an associate member of the EIGCA holding an honours degree from the British Institute of Golf Course Architects
Budersand was just voted best new opened golf course 2009 in Germany by the German “Golf Magazin”.
I thought that some of you GCA’s might be interested to learn more about this newly opened gem and this is the reason for my post here. Most probably I was the first one to play the course with my pre-1930 hickory shafted golf clubs, but after having read that Lahinch Golf Course was more than an inspiration for Mr. Hansen while designing Budersand hickories seemed appropriate for this seaside links course.
Budersand does not have club members and is open to green fee players only – this is a completely new idea in Germany. The site of the Budersand course was previously occupied by the German Army and in order to make space for the golf course the investor started to demolish 28 concrete building and though creating space for a new golf course on the island without having to try to use otherwise protected land.
According to my opinion Rolf-Stephan Hansen very successfully managed to create a brilliant new golf course at the same time perfectly improving the balance of nature and compared to what the area looked like before even the strictest ecologist will have to admit that this is golf course is an improvement of the situation at Budersand compare to let’s say the year 2000 and before. The course looks as if it has been there for a long time already – isn’t that what the architect is dreaming about?
There was only 47ha of space available as aprox. 20ha had to be put aside for nature. Because of constant winds the greens are flat and very fast during summer.
Enough talk – here are my pictures:
Golf Courses on the Island of Sylt
Southern part of the Island with Budersand / Hörnum
German Golf painter Viktor Cleve has done some nice paintings - this one for fairway No.7 with the Clubhouse in the back on top of the hill
This is a painting of Fairway No.14 - also by Viktor Cleve
and here hole no.17 as seen by Viktor Cleve...
First Tee & Starter House (this picture and some others are a bid grey due to 4°C temperature in Mid-March and average weather conditions)
No. 1 - a 382m Par 4 slight dog-leg to the left
and this for the second shot on No.1...
An elevated second teeshot - 351m slight dogleg to the right....
second shot on No.2....
A 1920's golfbag on a 2008 built tee No.4 - a 134m par-3 eastward usually played with the wind in the back...
Green no.4 with a not so beautiful former army barrack in the back of the green...
A tough tee-shot on the 401m Par4 No.5 - the most difficult hole on the course where the tee shot needs a good carry in order to clear the heather...
No.7 from the ladies tee - a 480m Par5 from the championship tees...
I was glad to miss this one on the 7th fairway.....
3rd shot on the 7th fairway - at least when playing with 1920s equipment.....
No.8 - a nice but quite challenging Par 3 at 168m
Green No.8 - this picture was obviously taken on another day with better weather conditions....
Hole no.9 to finish the first half.....