We’re booked for 10 days in May ‘22, covid-permitting. No real plans for any gowf, but if you were to recommend only ONE Round, where would it be?
Ta,
F.
I'd recommend Keilir, which is only 15 min. south of Reykjavik and would easily be a top 100 US public course or a top 100 course in England.
I was in Iceland about two months back with a non-golfer but I had seen some great pictures of Icelandic courses and set aside one day for golf. I think that that's perfect if you're doing a 5-6 day trip. I wouldn't privilege golf over a day of glacier climbing or a day at the Blue Lagoon, but the courses tend to be in pretty spectacular settings and you could easily justify it as also being a day of hiking.
The other reason to do it, as I mentioned above, is that there are good courses in close proximity to Reykjavik. I played two: Keilir and Brautarholt, which is the one with the robotic lawnmowers mentioned in the article. It's easy to play both in one day because they're only about 45 minutes apart, the latter being on a peninsula north of and overlooking Reykjavik.
A third reason is that in addition to being spectacular, each is an excellent course in its own right. Keilir is a championship course of ~6,500 yards where they continue to make improvements. It started as nine holes on the cliffs that are now the back nine, then they added a front nine in the lava to the south, then they expanding the cliffside part to nine main course holes (which they're continuing to tweak) and nine relief course holes. Although very different in character, both nines have several memorable holes, with links-like contours in the fairways on the lava nine and several drives over the cliffs on the back nine. The course also has an excellent set of greens.
Heavy contours in the first fairway:
A great green on eight:
A spectacular drive over the coast and fishing (?) houses on fourteen:
Another on sixteen:
And here's the approach to 18, one of the best finishing holes that I've played. It's a long par 4 and there's a wall and road 50-60 yards short of the green which may be tough to carry if you've hit a poor drive. The green is deep but narrow and you can use the area short and the left-to-right slope to feed the ball onto the green. If you carry the wall but hit a weak shot to the right, it can run down the hill and leave an almost blind pitch:
The other course that I played, the 12-hole Brautarholt is arguably even more spectacular. I'd describe this as a nine-hole course with three bonus holes because holes 10-12 are in a flat field and a bit out of character with the rest. I asked if we could play them as the first three and that was a good idea--they made a good warm-up. The course isn't as long as Keilir and the greens are larger, but every bit as interesting. There are a few awkward features, like the excessive bunkering in the first fairway and some long walks from 1-2 and 7-8, but it's a great place to spend a day because you'd want to hike this land even if there weren't a golf course there.
The spectacular approach to the first green:
The green is great too:
One of my favorite par 3s: the ~230 yard fifth. You can go for the green over the black gravel beach or bail out short-left and leave yourself a pitch on:
Another thing to note about golf in Iceland is that because the climate is cool and there aren't a lot of golf carts, fescue grows very well here and the course conditions in early September were excellent. There were several newer greens on Keilir that were all fescue and it's amazing how much smoother and faster good fescue greens are than they look (not like anyone gets to see them, though). The roombas at Brautarholt leave a bit higher cut in the fairways but those at Keilir were in top condition.
I've written more extensive reviews of both of these courses on my website if anyone's interested in exploring them a bit further:
http://www.brettandrewmeyer.com/golf-course-reviews/kellirhttp://www.brettandrewmeyer.com/golf-course-reviews/brautarholt