The Scandinavian (Old)

The three founders of software company Navision sold their business to Microsoft in 2002 then, with part of the multi-million dollar proceeds, they set about converting an old military base near Copenhagen into a top tier golf facility.

It took four years for planning approval to be granted, during which time Robert Trent Jones II was approached to design the new golf complex – which was rather opportunistic, actually, as his company was already heavily involved in Denmark at the time, working on upscale projects at Lubker and Skjoldenaesholm.

The old rifle range at Farum didn’t sit on free draining soil so the option was taken to truck in huge quantities of sand to cap the clay fairways. Not an ideal solution, of course – rather an expensive option in fact but one that pays off handsomely during periods of prolonged bad weather.

RTJ2’s lead architect Bruce Charlton was entrusted with the job of laying out the fairways of this 36-hole complex and the Old course duly opened in the summer of 2010, a year ahead of the New.

Accuracy is the watchword here because precision play is far more crucial than length off the tee. Cleverly, there are several instances on the Old where the illusion of danger has been built into the design; like on the 10th tee, where two nests of fairway bunkers appear to be one enormous sand trap and again at the 17th hole, where the landing area for the drive seems to be far smaller than it really is from the tee box.