Langelands Golf Club

Langelands Golf Club was established by a small group of golf enthusiasts in 1998. The golf course was ready to be played on in 2000.

Without bypassing individuals, there were probably two people who played a major role.

One was the bank manager of Langelands Bank and the other was the municipal director of Rudkøbing municipality (Langeland’s largest city).

The former Torben Rasmussen helped with the finances and the second, Henrik Jacobsen – today a well-known and very productive golf course architect – designed the golf course.

I will come back to Henrik Jacobsen later.

Today the club has about 240 members. The course is cared for and maintained by 2 permanent greenkeepers. The rest of the work is done by volunteers. From 6 to 40 members depending on the need.

And they are doing well. You feel it when you arrive.

It’s all well-groomed and well organized.

Authenticity and pride are the best words I can put on the experience of the atmosphere and culture.

A remark by one of the club’s volunteers might say it all:

“We’ve never had a deficit!”

If you go to the club’s website, which is quite modest in terms of form and content, you can read:

Vision for Langelands Golf Klub

1. Golf For Life
2. Everyone is welcome at Langelands Golf Klub, where you can practice the game of golf all your life and thereby stay healthy – even late in life.
3. Our goal is to increase your quality of life through healthy exercise in the nature and nice and friendly experiences with others.

Langelands Golf Club’s values

1. JOY: we create good experiences together and for each other. The goal is for everyone – including your fellow players – to come home in a better mood.
2. INCLUSIVENESS: Everyone is welcome, and we try to create good offers and opportunities for everyone regardless of age and physical ability.
3. TOGETHERNESS: The aim is to achieve social interaction across all groups in the club.

Must say we were quite impressed by the club, the enthusiastic members we met and its facilities.

A functional clubhouse, a nice pitching green, a good driving range, a small par 3 course, an excellent putting green. And an exceptionally well-maintained 18 holes golf course.

Considering the resources available. Hard not to make a fuss about.

It’s just about getting started. So now to the golf course.

The golf course

If I say forest course, park course, links course, seaside course or inland links course, many golfers immediately have a mental image of the course. However, as we know, you will find golf courses that differ from these terms in many ways. Courses that can be difficult to characterize.

The best term I can come up with, for Langeland’s golf course and many other courses we and you have played, is Farmland course.

A course built on a former agricultural area. See the following image.

On a farmland course the architect must take into account the stone fence and tall straight rows of trees that mark – or should I say marked – the borders between your and my land.

We see it in many places where the architect then places the tee place in a “suitable” length from the stone fence, so it presents a challenge. Should you hit short, or can you get over the fence in the drive or are you precise enough to make the opening that is made in the stone fence?

And, since you can’t cut down all the tall trees initially planted to mark the changes in ownership or to shelter the agra planting from the wind, you can only cut down enough trees for an opening where a fairway leads through.

When this is the case, the row of trees will often mark a dogleg, which then gives the player the challenge of placing the shot on the right side of the fairway to get a shot to the green.

A third criterion for a farmland course is the large wide and more or less hilly areas where corn or the like have previously been grown.

There are no trees or shrubs here – perhaps small ponds with reeds and shrubs round the pond. So, what does the architect do?

The architect must follow the contours of the landscape, over or around small hilltops and, where this is not possible, plant trees and shrubs that separate and gives each fairway character.

On the older courses, the purpose of such plantings is not felt or seen, because it’s now looks like a natural part of the landscape, but on new courses, such as Langelands, this is not the case.

Hole 2, par 3, 117 meters, index 17

A beautiful golf hole with the green placed close to the pond, sloping down to the water. Not a long hole and according to the index, also not difficult. But anyway. If you hit your ball too long ….. or too short, it easily happens that the ball rolls too far and into the water. But beautiful anyway.

Great job done by the architect.

Another example is hole No. 7. See the next picture.

The tee place is located right up to the fence (the black line). From the yellow tee there are “only” 161 meters to the dogleg, which are made of tall trees and shrubs (the red marking). If you have made it safely through the opening, you have a short iron to the green.

However, as cannot be seen on the illustration, the entire left side of the green, is covered with reeds, shrubs and trees. Both times we played the course, the hole was placed in section 1 of the green.

In the first round I went for the flag – couldn’t see it, but a 9-iron should be able to do it, and where did I end up – in the water in front of the green. Congrats to you Finn. Instead of playing safe to the middle of the green.

Finally, let me give one more example on what I call a Farmland course.

Hole number one is a great opening hole. And a hole relating to the history of Langeland and a hole illustrating one of the characteristics of the landscape.

On the next picture Eza is ready for her shot to the green.

Note the mound and the green to the right of the mound.

The mound is called a Hat, because of its shape. In the introduction to our Langeland trip, I talked about how the “hats” were shaped during the last ice age. The fairway shown in this picture illustrates a fine way to use the nature.

Right next to the green, outside the golf course, is one of Denmark’s oldest settlements. The archaeological excavations have been suspended but not completed.

The first hole on a golf course should, according to the course’s architect Henrik Jacobsen (and many other golf architects), be a fairly easy and manageable hole, where what you see is what you get.

A start that gives optimism and courage to play the course. And that’s how he made the first hole, too.

Par 5, 433 meters, first a small dogleg left, then a small dogleg right for the shot to the green. There is plenty of space on the left side of the fairway, so you can avoid the tall trees on the right side in your shot to the green.

Another general principle for many golf architects applies for hole 18.

The architect Henrik Jacobsen has been quoted for saying:

“The first hole should be friendly and manageable, but characteristic of the course, and the last hole should have a risk/reward element so that you can triumph or die with honor.”

So, what is the overall impression of the course?

A lot of good and well-constructed fairways and holes, following many of the previous descriptions that I have defined as Farmland courses.

The only thing I think is missing are what I call holes with a “Wauww” effect. That is a hole were standing on the tee you think “Holy-Moses”, this looks exciting.

There are a few holes with some “wauww” effect on this golf course.

But to me, the most exciting aspect on this course is something that (most probably) to many golfers are the most annoying and irritating thing that spoils the good mood. – THE GREENS!

The greens are relatively large, they are elevated – not much – just a little and some are also divided into 2 levels. Still small differences in the levels, but they are there.

On all greens we had an even and fine roll. The ball held the line – no surprises if you read the right line.

And here comes the irritation. If you read carefully enough (without exaggerating, as we see some of the professional players doing) you can read elevation and line. When you don’t do it thoroughly enough, you will end up shaking your head, asking: why didn’t it go in?

About the architect and Danish golf’s first EM-golf victory

Henrik Jacobsen was part of a very talented European Championship team, with a win over Germany in the final. Denmark’s first gold medal at the European Championships. That was in 1966.

About his golf architecture he has said:

As a player and an architect, I like that you stand on the tee and can see the task and must make a choice between at least two routes to the hole – one safer and one riskier. Therefore, blind shots from the tee should be avoided if possible, and there should be relatively good room for the ordinary players drive to the fairway.”

All in all, Henrik Jacobsen has since 1970 been the architect of or involved in building 32 Danish courses – with Samsø and Ærø perhaps the most spectacular.

You will hear about Ærø in later blogs.

He also has an opinion – that I share – about the stableford-system. Here is his opinion:

Ordinary golfers do not play better today than they did 40 years ago, perhaps quite the opposite, in spite of all the new equipment, claims Jacobsen, who blames part of this (mis)relationship with the stableford system that is played everywhere today.

Why?

Stableford destroys the game of golf. People don’t learn to score like you do when you play stroke play, because in stableford you’re not forced to fight for a seven instead of an eight. You take a chance, and if you don’t succeed, you just go on to the next hole. Not writing a 7, 8, 9 or more on your card. It degenerates the short game and the ability to scramble, he says. Jacobsen would much rather see more stroke play played without handicaps in narrow handicap groups, like the division in levels in other sports.

Okay – also my opinion.

On my second round on the course my score was 82 strokes. All strokes counted. That gave me 34 stableford points. But as Henrik is saying, it doesn’t tell you anything about my playing level compared to scratch (the par of the course).

And now to the finishing picture

The following picture is a statue you see when you walk from the 18th hole to the clubhouse.

The stone was found when the course was built, after which the local stonemason refined it.

I have not found any members who could tell us more about what it depicts or what the symbolism should be, but monumental it is.

When we saw it and looked at it in more details, I thought, gosh.

It was a sight that gave an impression, ignited a feeling, that put perspective on one’s life and game of golf.

Among other things, because it also made me think of Langeland’s many passage chambers and burial mounds, with their skeletons thousands of years old and – not least – the fates behind these.

Just a reminder not to take golf too solemnly.

If you need inspiration, sit down on one of the benches and let your thoughts fly!

That you can do on your way down the fairway to the 6th green.

Wish you good luck. Now off to Ærø