Greensgate Golf
“I’m always a bit reluctant when leaving a place I’m so enamoured with (Prague) but at the same time excited to discover pastures new…”
The region of West Bohemia is tucked into the folds of the wooded Sudeten Hills close to Germany’s eastern border. From Prague, it’s a straight 2-hour drive but en route there is one more golf course and attraction that no way we were going to pass by.
PLZEN, HOME OF PILSNER
When we arrived in Plzen it was raining heavily, the perfect excuse to spend the morning within the dark, damp but highly desirable sanctuary of the Urquell Brewery. Read all about it here…
GREENSGATE GOLF & LEISURE RESORT
By lunchtime, the skies had cleared giving us the afternoon to enjoy the 18-hole course followed by dinner in the Greensgate restaurant.
Greensgate has been around for almost 20 years and has seen quite a few changes. It hosted the Ladies’ European tour for 4 years which took it to a higher level and now, with new owners, the course and hotel facilities have been upgraded again with work done to several of the greens and a nice touch to the onsite eateries & accommodation.
Top quality rooms with great food downstairs and a superb golf course waiting just outside the door..
The accommodation includes 22 guest bedrooms and the Granary (the historical part) which offers 2 suites and a 4-person luxury apartment. The quality of the Granary rooms and apartment is exemplary so if you wanted to fully embrace the ‘pilsner experience’ along with this excellent golf course, it might be worth checking in here for a night or two. The luxury apartment for 4 or 6 people comes in at only €130 per night. (www.greensgate.cz/en)
GOLF GREENSGATE
Par 3 11th at Greensgate played from a slightly elevated tee and surrounded by lake Ejpovice,
We teed up on this tight but aesthetically appealing Par 72, 6,700-yard course that weaves between hills, forest and by the shores of Lake Ejpovice.
The course is not long off the visitor tees but it’s complicated. It doglegs frequently and this is a main aspect of its defence i.e. you have to screw back on the drives otherwise you’ll run into trouble.
If you knew the course, it would be a lot of fun but for first-timers like us, it was all too easy to run out of fairway and find the rough stuff. For that reason, it can be a bit frustrating! But it’s all part of getting to know a golf course and I’d love to give Greensgate another several goes to get its measure.
The Par 3, 11th is the most memorable hole, a tiny island green the size of a table-tennis bat or so it appears from the raised tee. The 12th is one of the sharpest doglegs - great if you can produce a tight fade or shall we say ‘a controlled slice’.
Greensgate is only an hour from the centre of Prague and another hour beyond is the Slavkov Forest, a special part of the Czech Republic with the emblematic town of Karlovy Vary at its centre.
WEST BOHEMIA
There’s a general confusion about the term ‘Bohemian’.
In modern parlance, it refers to an ‘unconventional’ lifestyle followed by artists, writers, poets or just plain vagabonds unwilling to settle for a prosaic lifestyle. It has little to do with the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic.
The term was first applied in France in the early 19th century to artistic types who were living in low-rent districts of Paris otherwise occupied by Romani people. It was the Romanis who were mistakenly thought to have reached France via Bohemia (the western part of the modern Czech Republic) when in fact they had nothing to do with the region.
Golf Resort Konopiště is a resort with an excellent spa and wellness centre. It’s a bit further out of town so you could book a couple of nights here and enjoy its two challenging 18-hole courses, D’Este and Radecký along with its excellent spa facility connected to the outdoor swimming pool. There is also a nine-hole public course.
Our final round was at Loreta, a slightly shorter course making up for a lack of length with much more strategic play off the tee and onto the greens. It’s a varied landscape presenting a different set of challenges for each hole.
KARLOVY VARY
Back on the road again and Karlovy Vary is a sophisticated town at the heart of West Bohemia’s spa region with ultra-classy hotels, shops and restaurants. The warm, natural springs of Karlovy Vary have been used in healing since the 14th century and the town is one of the world’s top spa destinations. Tens of thousands of people, especially from Germany and Russia arrive each year to take the waters from the town’s 12 thermal springs. It’s a great name, isn’t it - Karlovy Vary! It is also known as ‘Carlsbad’. Coincidentally, the Californian town of Carlsbad, home to Callaway, Cobra and Taylormade, is named after Karlovy Vary. Apparently Carlsbad, CA was big on natural springs too! Now it’s a fountain of golf equipment.
We popped into a couple of courses on our way to the hotel. Cihelny Golf Club is just south of Karlovy Vary and looks interesting though not on par with the courses we’d seen and played around Prague. The town of Karlovy Vary has its own golf course also, originally a 9-hole developed through the years into an 18-holer and this looks more prestigious and probably the one to play. This and Marianske Lazne Golf Club are the two oldest clubs in the country.
The town of Karlovy Vary is beautiful at night and worth a stroll through to find the right restaurant. There are lots of swanky shops and very upmarket hotels. I’d like to spend a bit more time in Karlovy Vary checking out the spa culture and general ambience of the place as it is very appealing. But we were here to golf!
There are 10 courses immediately accessible to Karlovy. Nearby is Franzensbad Golf Club also known as Františkovy Lázně. Everywhere here seems to have two versions of their name?? What's that all about? Franzensbad is an elevated parkland course with a nice texture to the loam not unlike our Scottish heathland courses. It rises and drops, not too steeply but keeping the terrain interesting.
Nearby Marianske Lazne is the second most popular spa town in the region. It developed later than Karlovy but now is just as popular. The Mariánské Lázně Golf Club is an exceptional parkland course first established in the time of King Edward VII who officially opened it in 1905. It’s tree-lined then opens out onto wider fairways with the occasional little lake to watch out for. Both Marianbad and Franzensbad are solid tests, perhaps more in line with ‘resort’ courses and of an older style while those near the city of Prague are of a more modern, demanding standard. It would definitely be worth bringing your golf clubs however if you were going to take the waters of either Karlovy Vary or Marianske Lazne and play a little golf, the perfect way to enjoy a few days in these health-enhancing mountains.
Golf Club Kynžvart has been built in a park surrounding an impressive chateau dating back to 1821.
WHEN TO COME
The month of April gets nice in Prague and the golfing season stretches well into October. Cooler continental weather comes a bit earlier in the mountains of West Bohemia and October is probably too late to enjoy. June to August can be a bit tourist hectic in Prague though this is the ideal time to explore the outlying areas.
GETTING THERE
Prague is super-easy to get to from Scotland and most other parts of the world. There are direct, low-cost flights from either Edinburgh or Glasgow (Easyjet, Jet2 and Ryanair at around £100 return plus the cost of your clubs and checked luggage). You can hire a car and self-drive in the Czech Republic but it’s easier and not that much more expensive to let a ground-handling company like Abante (www.abante-golf.co.uk) look after the transport. Then everyone can relax and enjoy the wonderful pilsners you’ll no doubt run into between and after rounds.
