As your article explains Fano Golf Links was Denmark‘s first golf course, and the location was selected due to the links-type grass on the island. It was won by Robert himself, but I would imagine that it was more of an inaugural demonstration than anything else. After construction, the first Danish Open was played on 10th August, 1901, probably over 18 holes as it appears to have been a one-day event.
The course was originally designed and built by my great uncle, Robert Dunlop. In a letter, Bill Hewitson wrote to Douglas Seaton, the North Berwick Golf Historian, in 2008: Christoph Meister, noted German golf historian, has gathered the following information about Robert Dunlop from Bill Hewitson in Northern Ireland, who is Robert Dunlop‘s great nephew.
The gutta percha ball was still in play when Robert Dunlop came to these shores and built Fano Golf Links for a German wine merchant from Bremen. The course has evolved greatly since opening as a nine hole course in 1901 (yes, that’s right, it opened a couple of years before Walton Heath, for instance).
#Alex dunlop golf driver#
Driver and three wood will each likely be used on several occasions but it is the mix of long irons/hybrids (either off the tee or as approach shots) that the golfer finds himself frequently hitting that makes Fano Golf Links a thorough test from tee to green, something that few if any other 5,600 yard courses can claim. The cumulative result of all eighteen holes is fascinating: The golfer is virtually guaranteed to hit every club in his bag. Given how its mix of shortish par fours seems to invariably find a way to rub past some of the interior marshlands that dot the property, prudence off the tee in the form of a long iron, hybrid or even five iron is sometimes the best play. Though short in length, the dunes, lyme grass, heather and wind make Fano long in character.Īs noted with the flags above, a fresh breeze off the North Sea generally livens the proceedings as well. With dunes ranging in size from five to twenty-five feet and then crumpled land everywhere else, it is ideally suited for golf. Add in how the heather and lyme grasses thrive in the low humidity on the sandy, treeless landscape and as seen below, literally no matter which way the golfer turn, the course offers one compelling view after another. the fifth, eighth, ninth, fifteenth, and seventeenth) than most courses that the PGA golfers play week in, week out.
Laid across some of the most intoxicating dunescape found in world golf, Fano Golf Links possesses more enticing holes (e.g. Located on Fano, an island just off the west coast of Denmark, its lack of length (under 5,600 yards from the back), lack of bunkers (there are none) and the fact that the square tee areas are four feet by four feet slabs of artificial turf might lead one to quickly discount it and relegate the course to a certain, lowly level. The wooden marker in the distance denotes the hidden green’s location. As seen from the exhilarating ninth tee, the prospect of a game at Fano will quicken the pulse of any fan of links golf.