Established in 1904, Stockholms Golfklubb is the second oldest in Sweden. The club moved around quite a bit in its formative years, operating from four different venues before finally settling at its present location.
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Established in 1904, Stockholms Golfklubb is the second oldest in Sweden. The club moved around quite a bit in its formative years, operating from four different venues before finally settling at its present location.
Stockholm
Stockholms Golfklubb was formed in 1904, which makes it the second oldest in Sweden. The club’s course at Kevinge in Danderyd, is actually the fifth golfing layout it has operated. The original three 9-hole tracks didn’t survive and the fourth course (built in 1927) was the first 18-holer in the country, now belonging to Lidingö Golfklubb.
Kevinge was laid out in 1932 in rolling parkland terrain with mature trees flanking many of the fairways. John Morrison, Harry Colt’s design partner, laid out the holes which were built by construction manager Rafael Sundblom.
Sundblom subsequently became the first Swedish golf course architect, going on to design more than a dozen other courses, with Halmstad’s first eighteen holes (in 1938) perhaps his finest effort. Ten of those initial greens (at 1-3, 6, 8, 12, 14-16 and 17) remain in play today.
A par 72 layout was in play here until the late 1960s when three holes on the front nine were lost to development. Nils Sköld, Sundblom’s successor on the greens committee – and Sweden’s most prolific golf course architect at that time – designed the current 9th, 10th and 11th holes, replacing those that were taken away.
The next changes occurred in the late 1980s when the current 5th and 6th holes were significantly shortened to accommodate the building of a nursing home. The current layout became lopsided as a result, playing to a par of 33 for the front nine then a par of 36 for the back nine.
Swedish golf clubs have rarely looked backwards to their design history as new has generally been regarded as synonymous with better. However, in 2020 the club called in Christian Lundin from (re)Golf to restore the layout.
The main focus of the project was to replace all the bunkers – using modern capillary bunker liners – and replicate the style of those that were in play when historical photos were taken years ago. The architect also created new forward tees, installed a new irrigation system and rebuilt the par threes at the 4th and 9th holes.
Thanks to Gustav Öhman for providing this edited update to the original narrative in late 2023.