Snow Golf World Cup 2007

With this years mild winter, the conditions for the Snow Golf World Cup 2007 in Abtenau/Austria weren’t nearly as good as last year. It became a very funny weekend after all.

Arriving Friday afternoon I had a quick chance to have a look at the course and the conditions before hitting the players night. The course was situated around the ski lift, partly on ski slopes and partly on cow meadows, a par 36 nine hole course consisting of eight par 4′s and one par 3. With just a little snow left, it should be partly snow- and crossgolf for saturday.

The players night was good fun, I didn’t know anybody at first, but made the acquaintance of Hans, an editor for ‘De Telegraaf‘ and later on, Joost und Gina Hage. Joost is a PGA Professional and was giving trick golf shows on the weekend.

I was on the second flight at 9:10 for the morning, but due to the nasty weather – we had a mixture of rain and snow with heavy winds – many of the participants didn’t show up. The first flight was missing two, my flight was missing three, so instead of playing alone, I joined the first flight of Gernot and John:

More pics over at flickr!

That playing on snow isn’t that easy was my experience already on the first tee. On the slippery, icy ground I swung to hastily at the ball, lost my stand during the downswing and produced a poor tee shot, just missing a lady. In other aspects it is a good practice, because only with a consistent swing speed in your up- and downswing you’ll be able to produce a good shot and good impact.

On the way to the green white I could see that in these rather uncomfortable and cold conditions, my shots lost about 25% in length compared to a normal summer round. The hardest thing was the short game and the putting. On the whites, the ball didn’t roll properly, it slided more than anything and thus was much harder to control. Due to the warm weather and the rain, the whites also were damaged, it was a bumpy ride into the hole.

For a temporary course the nine holes were pretty interesting. The first three played linear, holes four through six posed challenges with blind shots and precise ball placement to produce a good score. The best I was able to shoot was double bogey on the first six. With the conditions given, it was ok. The seventh was the only par three on the course, the birdie book marked it with 130 meters, but it was more like 160. Solid five iron, chip onto the green, two putt and bogey was the best result of the day. The eigth hole played up the ski slope, the ninth went down again on the other side on the ski lift. Again, the ninth would have made a good impression on a regular golf course.

Neither of us cared too much about the scores we played, we fought the elements together and enjoyed our good shots like Johns marvelous second on the ninth that landed within two meters of the pin from some 140 meters downhill. There aren’t any results online, so I can only guess in what place I finished, somewhere in the middle I guess. The winner of the tournament fired some 15 gross points, a really impressive score on such difficult turf.

Saturday nights party rounded up a very well organised event that only suffered from bad weather. Everybody had a good time and was very open, it was easy to meet new people and have some nice chats. Special thanks to Annabell Hölzl for the help and the organisations, to Gernot and John for the fun round and another special thanks to John for the excellent airport shuttle service. Hope to see you all in 2008.