A man who had never touched a golf club in his life dreamed up the idea of a tournament for golfers from all over the world in a rather unusual location – Greenland. He called his crazy idea the Ice Golf Championship and it has already become established as a tourist attraction.
“In the end you don’t notice the cold when you are playing because you are so impressed with the beauty that nature has to offer. You get a surreal feeling as if you were on the surface of the moon or maybe in the Superman movie when Clark Kent returned to the Planet Krypton.”

The cold that golfer Jack O’Keefe is talking about is like no other: the average temperature is 50 degrees below zero. The surreal surface is also like none other: it is the vast plains of Greenland, and specifically the city of Drambuie, where each year on average 20 golfers like North American O’Keefe have a date with an extraordinary competition: the Ice Golf Championship.

The journey to Greenland alone makes the event worthwhile. For any golfer, just being there, within 600km of the Arctic Circle, thinking about how to play their best golf on the frozen surface, surrounded by huge icebergs and nature’s ice sculptures, is the best adventure of all. Because here you don’t just think about how to sink your puts or improve your swing; you also have to deal with the environmental conditions.

“Ice golf is all about survival – says golfer Tom Ferrell –. It’s about managing the elements, fitting in to a different environment from the green courses that we are used to playing on, and joining in with this adventure with friends from so many different countries”.

Countries as diverse as Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Switzerland and South Africa. And the winner of this year’s tournament, held last March, was Jason Cunningham from Australia, which is a long way from the frozen Arctic winds.
A golf course of contrasts

The Drambuie Ice Golf Championship began in 1997, as part of a marketing strategy by local resident Arne Neiman, who dreamed up the tournament as a way of attracting more tourists to the area. However playing golf on ice is nothing new and it certainly dates back at least as far as the 17th century. Proof of this exists in a painting by Dutch artist Aert van der Neer (1603-1677), depicting a group of players each holding golf clubs trying to hit a ball into a hole in the ice on a frozen canal in the Netherlands. In those days the game was known as “kolven.”

So although the idea dreamed up by the people of Greenland is neither new nor original, it certainly is exotic. For starters, we have the vision of a golf course that is white instead of green, and the balls that criss-cross the course are orange instead of the usual white. We also have to take into account the “movement” of the landscape as any climatic change such as rapid atmospheric warming can change the topography of the course, making the surface fragile or putting obstacles (normally huge ice bergs) where none had been before.

To give just one example of such a phenomenon, in 1998 when the weather was paradoxically fine, ideal for any golf tournament, the event had to be cancelled. Normally the region’s waters freeze in December creating one hundred square kilometers of flat surface, and ice one meter thick. These conditions lead to huge icebergs being captured by the frozen waters.
On this occasion, Greenland was experiencing unusually warm weather, something that happens every 40 years or so. This resulted in the ice reaching a thickness of no more than 10 cm, which would never have been able to support the golfers. However this has happened only once in the 9 years that the tournament has been in existence.

The initial 15 players who took part in the first tournament have grown to the 20 who currently play, which is the maximum number allowed to enter. The highest handicap allowed is 36. Some of international golf’s best known faces take part in this competition. In 1999 Ronan Rafferty, 1989 European Golfer of the Year, took part. 2002 saw three players from the Challenge Tour, one from the United States Buy.com Tour (previously PGA) and another from the Futures Tour who also played on the LPGA Tour.

Today, the Drambuie Ice Golf Championship, which can only be held on two days each year because of the climatic conditions, is known the world over. It is held on Greenland, which is the largest island on the planet, and provides a unique opportunity to enjoy the location’s varying landscapes, where small colored shapes (the homes of the people who live there) contrast with the vast white expanse. This is the only sign of human presence, except for the annual visit by golf enthusiasts who interrupt the routine of these frozen lands.