Sweden, Barsebäck - Golf at Barsebäck

BARSEBÄCK G&CC
Number of holes: 36.
Bankaraktär: Parkbana/Skogs- path / Seaside.
HCP requirements: 36/36.
Year built: 1970 (Old Course), 1989 (Donald Steel Course).
Trivia: Järavallens Conference & Country Club offers two restaurants, indoor-outdoor pool, sauna, solarium, tennis courts, boules, volleyball and golf with two 18-hole championship courses in the area, golf academy and the country's best training opportunities.
Price: Everyday, in double room EUR126, including one night and green fees. For more information, contact Järavallen Conference & Country Club, AB, Box 214 246 02 Löddeköpinge.
Phone: 046-77 70 50
Fax: 046-77 58 98th
Homepage: www.barsebackresort.se

One of the best

Southern Sweden has many delights; not least Barsebäck with its championship course that has been visited by the golf elite quite a number of times.

Barsebäck has many useful properties as a course, but the best thing for us average golfers is the knowledge that we are playing the same holes that we've seen the world's top players do. This is the kind of stuff that makes golf fascinating.
You can never compare yourself with high jumper Blanka Vlasic even if you once were school champion in the master in the second class at 37.4 inches, you cannot keep up with hundred metre runner Usain Bolt for two feet and how no matter how fast you swim in your homemade freestyle a competition swimmer like Michael Phelps will breeze past you ... during a distance workout in the breaststroke.
It’s different with golf.
Every now and then everyone makes a shot or sinks long putts that even Tiger Woods and Annika Sorenstam would be satisfied with and it’s those times that you allow your imagination to run and almost hear Göran Zachrisson whisper something about middle-aged man in a meteoric career.
How much money is there on the Senior Tour?
That after such a shot you clumsily hit the next one wrong is another story.

Since 1992 it has been possible to play the same course as the stars in the Scandinavian Masters have played at Barsebäck. Or rather, it has been possible to play holes that have been included in the Masters’ course.
It has been a mix of The Old Course and the Donald Steel Course, but during 2003 Barsebäck made a permanent Masters Course. This so that guests would have the opportunity to play on exactly the course that the pros do when they visit Barsebäck.

A goal that Gösta and his colleagues have is for Barsebäck to be one of the world's best courses. Something that Gosta Carlsson and his colleagues believe already today. Not only because the legendary Jack Nicklaus said it in 1983 or because Scot Colin Montgomerie, when he finished second in the Scandinavian Masters in 1995, unexpectedly took the microphone after Parneviks victory speech and said it was the best course he has ever played ... And something that strengthens these warming words is that Barsebäck has hosted the Solheim Cup and also the men's Scandinavian Masters, nine times. So there must be a grain of truth in the declaration of Barsebäck having a world-class course.

Something that strengthens Barsebäck as host of major events is its ability to absorb both the spectators and the spectators’ cars. It is largely due to the large crowd that many elite players have Barsebäck as a favourite course. Ask for example John Daly, the far-hitting and in many ways remarkable American, what he thinks of the Scanian audience.
Or better yet: ask Gosta Carlsson what he thinks about Daly.
“What a showman, "says Gosta Carlsson, and talk about giving of yourself. There are too many prima donnas otherwise, both in men's and women's golf. I am hardened, but sometimes it's like a joke to hear the person who played poorly, and putted too short say that the greens were too slow and person who putted too far the same weekend say that they were too fast. It’s much nicer with types like John Daly.

Even the accommodation is built for the elite. Barsebäck Golf Hotel, with 36 double rooms, has been built amidst the golf courses. You park your car by a tee and have breakfast on the fairway. Almost, anyway. Eighteen rooms on the upper floor and eighteen on the bottom. The rooms are large and airy and the entire hotel building has been provided with generous windows, both in the rooms and in public areas, so that you really feel you are sitting in the middle of a golf course. The hotel was much longed-for. Especially couples on a golf weekend have asked for hotel accommodation in Barsebäck.
Otherwise it is in the terrace house apartments that most of the world stars - and average Joes - usually stay in at Barsebäck, 73 or 110 square metres, four or six beds.

Text: Ola Liljedahl

Photo: Ulf Berglund

Web Editor: Emma Lindén