Last year, in August, a fellow blogger and I tried to get a tee time at the famous Old Course in St. Andrews. We enrolled as we were told, waited – and received a negative answer. You might have read the story.
Of course we were extremely disappointed as our dream was so radically ending in smoke. Of course there are other ways to play the Old Course but none of them guaranteed a round for us two – at least not in an affordable way.
What to do now, we started thinking. Fly anyway and play the other courses? We could have done that, but honestly, when you are travelling to St. Andrews, the Home of Golf, you definitely want to play the mother of all courses. So we decided to skip completely.
But what else?
In the end we planned a golf trip in front of our doorsteps. We both live in Germany which offers quite some treasures if you just dig deep enough. A word and a blow, we decided on 4 prestigious clubs in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), all very close to each other (Cologne and Düsseldorf area) and all with their own history (one of which to be honest has a quite young history).
These are the ones that we finally went for:
- Golf und Land-Club Köln, Refrath
- Golf Club Gut Lärchenhof, Pulheim
- Düsseldorfer Golf Club
- Land und Golf Club Düsseldorf, Hubbelrath
All of these courses have a rich history and hosted uncounted professional events. Even Gut Lärchenhof with its rather short history stands out as this is the venue for the European Tour event ‘BMW International Open’, at least every second year.
I’m writing these words sitting in a hotel during the stay. Earlier today we finished round 3 and now it’s only one course still missing. Please check back with this blog to read all the course reviews.
Generally it’s an interesting experience to take some days off at work, don’t travel long but concentrate on some seriously magnificent golf courses in the middle of our home country.
Golficiency 