Landeryd (Vesterby) - Central & North Sweden - Sweden

What is enjoyment on a golf course to you?

The vast majority of Swedish golfers are fed a steady diet of target golf and although there is a lot of variety between courses in mainly open country exposed to wind and those with many dogleg holes cut out of dense woodland which are not, it tends to come down to iron approaches through the air aimed at the pin and putting, interspersed with wedge recoveries from sand or (semi)rough.

Vesterby is a very welcome exception to this not so varied diet and lucky are the denizens of the Linköping and wider Östergötland area, who do not have to jump on a plane or travel many hours in the car (there are a few true links and faux-links courses in Skåne in the very south of Sweden) to experience the true joy of playing golf on a firm and fast course designed with the running game in mind.

When I played the course recently (October 2020) it was after a long wet spell which led many courses to close temporarily or for the season, even those blessed with sandy soil. In spite of this, I could not spot a single pitch mark on Vesterby's fescue greens and played nothing but rolling 7- and 8-irons as recovery shots around its greens. The greens were obviously not at their fastest (thank God!) but they still rolled reasonably true.

This is the first review of this course on Top100, so a brief summary of (mainly Swedish-language) reviews elsewhere could perhaps be in order: They tend to sum it up as "either love it or (WTF) hate it". Those in the latter camp tend to dislike the fact that "perfect" approach shots aimed at the pin bounce or roll off and that your recoveries could easily go from one side of the green across to the other as hitting lob wedges perfectly from a rock hard surface is an art not so many golfers master (not me either on an average day, thank you very much!).

However, I can see other more valid reasons for marking it down somewhat:

(1) Tees

These are often very far from level and it takes a sunny disposition to enjoy consistently hitting your tee-shots from below and/or above the ball. I understand this is partly a legacy of a tightened budget during the building phase and partly a result of 14 years of subsidence. Anyway, I am hoping that the club will find the money (and/or staff time) to rectify this.

(2) Bunkers

Architect Johan Benestam himself volunteers this point and says that he is still hoping to come back to build more bunkers, particularly where golfers tend to land their drives as well as rebuilding the existing ones. Having sparred against his intelligent bunkering at Royal Drottningholm for nine seasons and only on few occasions without damage on the scorecard, I agree. However, I also hope that most of the new bunkers would be on the fairways rather than around the greens as it is the run-off areas which make Vesterby special.

(3) Forward tees

I am sure Landeryd does not encourage its beginner members to play at Vesterby, but seeing the struggles of my playing companions, two gentlemen in their 60s who had both played with single-figure handicaps in the past, I think that creating a shorter course than today's Yellow (5575 meters) would be highly beneficial for the enjoyment of the course for the vast majority of golfers, as would promoting the existing set of orange tees.

Have yet to play any other courses in the Östergötland area, but they have to be very good to entice me away from another stop here next time I happen to travel nearby.

Highly recommended.