Going for Golf

Austria - Put the skis away

Schwarzsee

A choice of four ‘in-town’ clubs – Eichenheim, Kitzbühel Schwarzsee, and the nine-hole Schloss Kaps and Rasmushof – make a good platform for a holiday with golf, or golfing holiday. The Tyrol and Salzburg province has as many as 31 partner clubs enrolled in its chip-pin card arrangement, offering five or three green fees at reduced rates depending on need. In Kitzbühel itself, 15 hotels expressly offer golf deals, some of them in co-operation with British tour operators.

Standard Austrian prices are not out of the way – a green fee will be around €60-90 and a buggy €30. Electric trolleys are popular, as everywhere. Priding itself on its title, Golfing Centre of the Alps, Kitzbühel offers a variety of inducements in its festival golf week, not least a long-driving joust on a machismo section of the Streif, the well-named run on the legendary Hahnenkamm mountain.

Sections of both downhill and slalom courses turn over to summer golf on Rasmushof’s nine-hole, par-three, 2,760-yard course. It belongs to the highly sophisticated Rasmushof hotel, so popular with the race crowd, which provides exemplary services to match. As with most Austrian courses, that includes driving range, chipping and putting ground, and here, a golf academy.

Downhill aces like Toni Sailer and Franz Klammer, who once sprayed cheering crowds with their parallel stops, could later swing a useful golf club hereabouts. Until his untimely death last year, Sailer, the triple gold medallist of the 1956 Cortina Winter Olympics, presided over Golf Week, and this year’s competition, embracing 14 events over three courses from June 20-27, will specially honour him.

Kyle Phillips’ Eichenheim is the pre-eminent introduction to Kitzbühel golf. Its very first hole is a par-five, 550-yarder off the whites. Cleverly exploiting tree, sand trap and elevation, the Californian master keeps the pressure on for the full 7,000 yards. Lovely when it stops? No, in these surroundings you want it to go on and on. Maybe mid and long handicappers will better enjoy themselves off the yellow tees at 6,057 yards. For all, the high point comes at the 11th, SI1 at 460 yards off the whites, followed without breath by a par-three over a 200ft precipice to a green far, far below.

Eichenheim has been home to the PGA Challenge Tour’s Austrian Championship, but well established close to the town is the Schwarzsee club, where a British professional and his team operate a friendly service. The front nine of the par-72, 7,264-yard test is well wooded, but with streams and ponds calling for diligent use of the course guide. Accuracy and club choice is more important than length. The back nine is rather hillier, but offers panoramic views of the Hahnenkamm and Kitzbuehlerhorn mountains. The par-three 16th presents a special challenge, anything short disappearing into a rocky chasm. The drop zone is well-employed. So, one gathers, is Kitzbühel’s tourist red card, offering a 25 per cent green fee rebate along with other concessions in town.

Kitzbühel’s oldest club, the nine-hole Kaps, in the grounds of a luxuriously modernised ‘schloss’ hotel, is not to be under-rated. It has preserved two island greens as part of its own update, and for 60 years many a local has honed a single-figure handicap here.

Out of town there is good variety. The Kaiserwinkl, at Kössen, 20 miles to the north, immediately takes the eye with a highly sophisticated bar and restaurant. You need to visit it last, not first, for the tactical demands. The course is relatively short at 6,173 yards. After a relatively straightforward start, a right-hand dog-leg is the first hole to occasion a number of references to the course guide for direction, distance and roll. Tall pines shield almost every hole, and your lob wedge or chipping iron needs to be in good shape. Also your eye for a putt – the greens have subtle requirements.

Kaiser stands for King, and the Wilder Kaiser club terrace at Ellmau, also to the north, is the spot to enjoy a stein of local beer and pass your gaze over three glittering nine-hole loops (yes, a lot of water!) to the most regal of mountain backdrops. A network of lake, pond and stream fashion the two prime loops, but in truth there are good, open-shouldered opportunities.