Regensburg

For a number of historic reasons, Germany has no "Royal" golf clubs (Dortmund’s Royal Saint Barbara was founded by the British military), but if it did, then Golfclub Regensburg would be a prime candidate. The course is nicknamed "Thiergarten" (Animal Garden) after the surrounding forest that has been used for hunting by the regional nobility since 1813. The former hunting lodge is now the clubhouse and it smells authentically royal and ancient thanks to the vintage wood panelling. From the stately entrance road to the splendid patio, everything here has class written all over it.

The course, an exemplary Donald Harradine design on a pretty severe site, is a slightly different story. While it certainly exudes plenty of blue-blooded elegance, there is also an element of blue-collar raucousness when holes suddenly seem to drop off the face of planet Earth. It's a stroll in the park from the parking lot to the first tee only, then the course plunges down the hill and zigzags in terraces back up to the clubhouse. And that is actually the flatter part of the round!

The 10th hole drops down again to the lower part of the site, but this time there are no terraces to soften the return climb. Instead, the golfer now bears the full brunt of the terrain in an all-uphill struggle home from the 15th tee. While this does create a few fantastically dramatic holes, it also makes the closing stretch quite laborious.

The forest provides many different species of trees (and occasional boar sightings right of the 17th hole), but also a number of shaded areas that have a hard time drying out. However, in all other respects the conditioning is excellent, perhaps helped by the superintendent being a scratch golfer himself.

So, despite a tendency for wetness and its awkward routing, "Thiergarten" is a very good course, certainly one of the most interesting in Germany. The golf history buff will have an additional reason to visit as the city of Regensburg, itself a Unesco World Heritage site, also houses one of the foremost European golf museums.