Golfgarten Deutsche Weinstrasse

The Golfgarten Deutsche Weinstrasse – name says it all – is situated in the middle of the wine region Pfalz between Grünstadt and Bad Dürkheim. Founded 1995 it was expanded in 2004 to 27 holes, a new clubhouse and a 6 hole practice course was built. All holes have the name of a wine sort, thus demonstrating the wine heritage of the region.

The name “golf garden” is taken literally, over 2000 fruit trees are ligning the fairways and greens, so your round catering is growing around you. All this doesn’t have the aboriginal character as at GC Reischenhof which we played a couple of days earlier. You can enjoy the view you have around the course with all the vineyards bordering the course and fairways, the course itself is pretty boring to play. All holes play like an autobahn straight ahead, little uphill, little downhill but nothing exciting or something that makes you think about game strategy or club selection. We played the C-A-combination of the course, it felt like playing a Mickey Mouse course, most of the par 4′s are shorter than 300m, one par 3 is only 90m, the longest hole is the 20th hole, a 535m par 5. The complementary birdie book isn’t really needed at all.

What made the round we played there the nerviest one we played all year were two factors:

1. It was goddam noisy! Ok, it was wine harvesting season and the harvesting machines were all over the place. I could have lived with that, but then there was the disposal truck for the toilets that pumped and stank like hell, the road, the railroad, etc…

2. Annoying people on the course. We played the first nine hole in 90 minutes flat and still had four guys in carts behind us putting pressure on us and on the second nine we got stuck behind a foursome but nonetheless the single player behind us pushed us and played close behind us. We could have waved him through, but there was no place to go in front of us. Relax, goddamit.

And almost everyone was driving around in carts on a flat course. Geriatrics anyone? That didn’t bother me as much as the unfriendlyness of the people. We showed good etiquette and greeted everyone that crossed our path, almost nobody greeted back and just walked along.

Taking everything into account, I’ll probably won’t play there again. The course isn’t a challenge and the surrounding factors don’t make up for it. If you’d still give it a shot, here are the contact details:

Golfgarten Dackenheim
Deutsche Weinstraße
67273 Dackenheim
Tel: 06353/989212
http://www.golfgarten.de/

Greenfee is 40 EUR on weekdays and 50 EUR on weekends, driving range and short course can be used for 15 EUR and 20 EUR respecively.