Surely the highlight of my vacation trip last week was playing at Golfclub St. Leon-Rot, one of the finest golf courses Germany has to offer. St. Leon-Rot is in situated in between Mannheim and Karlsruhe, to get to the Golf Club you have to drive through the industral park of St. Leon-Rot, at the very end of the street you enter another world. St. Leon-Rot offers two 18 hole courses – St. Leon and Rot, a 9 hole short course and a “bambini course. I had a tee time for Rot, the course that was voted Germanys finest golf course from 2001 – 2005 and I was about to discover what this meant.

A wide array of buildings – caddy hall, pro shop and club house separate the member parking from the guest parking lot (yes, keep it all separate). A very friendly and helpful staff introduced me to everything and I was lucky enough to play for free as my home club Gut Kaden has a greenfee agreement with St. Leon-Rot. Otherwise, the weekly greenfee would have been EUR 80,00 and EUR 95,00 on weekends.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve played around with Google Earth numerous times to spot golf courses or to spot strange obstacles on fairways like this one:

Now I found the ultimate kmz-file containing tons of golf courses over at the Google Earth Community, check out the list:

Great to plan your next vacation and not miss a single golf course. In case you are looking for golf course reviews (besides the ones presented here), you can point your brwoser at powerslice.de – Golfplatz-Wiki (german only). This wiki just was set up and needs your participation. Read more about it over at Birdies & Bogeys.

Sad, but true: it is time to say goodbye to my favourite driving range in Berlin. The Driving Range Mitte will have to make way for the new building of the “Bundesnachrichtendienst” (Federal German Intelligence). A lot was discussed about the how, when and why, but now the time is up for the range. Today, the covered tee boxes were removed as the first part of deconstruction. Damn, I’ll miss the place.

Upcoming saturday, October 7th, the Bowler Challenge Cup will mark the finale of the 2006 Bowler Tour (see also Caddie Cup and Martini Cup). As always, the Cup will be played at the GC Prenden. Check out the Bowler Tour website for more information.

What the heck is a Benzinger? I had to ask my flightpartners yesterday in the 1st Royal Benzinger tournament to find out that it is the worst possible divot: the ball still is in its original position, but the grass divot has wrapped itself around it. My kind of tournament, I thought, fun people wanting to have a good time on the course.

Ralf, Henning and I took on the challenge of the GC Stolper Heide west course. During the next six hours (took a little long) we all would go through every emotion this sport has to offer. Anger, frustration, challenge and joy. Ralf’s day was made by his first par on the par4 17th, leaving the birdie putt just a little short of the cup. Henning went through his first tournament of the year after a longer pause and played a solid game. Both of the guys played really nice wood shots off the tee and made me miss my woods a little bit. My irons give me good lenghts off the tee, but there is no margin for error with a four iron, the woods were a little more forgiving. Maybe this is the practice plan for the winter, to get them working again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday, 07. Oktober 2006
13.30 CNN, Living Golf
19.30 CNN, Living Golf

Sunday, 08. Oktober 2006
09.30 CNN, Living Golf
15.30 CNN, Living Golf
20.30 CNN, Living Golf

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.

Read the rest of this entry »