The Arctic Open, In Partnership with Icelandair
The sun doesn’t really set in Akureyri at this time of year. At 2am, it dips down to the horizon in the mouth of the fjord, rolls like a putt along the surface of the water and then rises again without threat of darkness.
I’ve played in a lot of golf tournaments but none quite like this. At The Arctic Open, in association with Icelandair, the tee times run from 10am-11pm, which means the final groups sign their cards around the same time the teenagers leave the local nightclub. We’re playing in groups of 4: a mixture of gender, age and handicap. In two days time, the 38th Arctic Open Champion will be crowned based on the best nett stableford score. I’d always dreamed of playing in The Open, but the Icelandic version sounds a little more fun.
I’m jaded from a late night of playing at Brautarholt Golf Course, but a 45 minute nap on the flight north from Reykjavik has given me a fighting chance. I’m as far north on the globe as I’ve ever been, in a country I’ve never been to, in a town I’ve never heard of; this is an away game like no other. Rumours of impressive winning scores from years gone by circulate amongst the group. I fear I might be heading into the Icelandic golfing gauntlet. Perhaps these are a group of avid golfers so busy with the demands of survival in the mountains of Akureyri that they failed to realise they are golfing prodigies. But then again, surely people don’t break par when they finish up at 3am?
We arrive at the clubhouse and I immediately get a clearer sense of what's to come. People are rushing in the front door, which is flanked by Icelandair sponsorship flags, to enjoy the pre tournament buffet and hear the schedule for the coming days. There’s a group of 6 wearing red and white panelled long sleeve tee shirts with Canadian flags on the back. Brushing past them are polo shirts emblazoned with stars and stripes. The novelty shirts are sparse in comparison to the large, mostly blonde, all attractive, Nordic looking people packed shoulder to shoulder in the hall of the quaint clubhouse. The speaker taps the microphone to gain our attention, a booming voice penetrates the room: “Dömur og herrar, velkomin á Arctic Open.” I get the gist.
Iceland is obsessed with golf. The country has the most number of golf courses per capita in the entire world (roughly 65 golf courses for roughly 320,000 inhabitants). The sport falls just behind football and handball as the most popular in the country with over 10% of the population taking to the fairways.
With such a short season, locals can only play 4 months of the year, which means the fervour is concentrated. Bogi Nils, my ironically named Icelandic host and CEO of Icelandair, says that the 20 golf courses around Reykjavik simply aren’t enough to bolster demand: they need to build more.
Particularly now that Icelandair offer purpose-made stopover itineraries to US and European golfers that are open to one of the world's most exotic and adventurous golf experiences in the world. The lively turn out for the Arctic Open becomes a little more clear.
I warm up by hitting some golf balls from the top of a soviet style concrete driving range before heading to the first tee. My playing partners have clocked on to the fact that I used to play professionally. Questions like ‘So how many are you going to win by?’ are delivered like compliments and received like a sobering swig of pressure.
The golf course itself is very close to what I expected. Fairways are lined with pine trees giving way to arid snow capped mountains that tower over the perimeter at every angle. The fairways are lush and green with patches of scruffiness. The summer has arrived a little late this year in Iceland, two weeks previous a flurry of bad weather covered the entire golf course in 3 inches of snow. But you wouldn’t know it now. The sun has crept through the clouds and the glint from the mountain tops is expelling a wash of white brightness over the course.
Standing on the 4th encapsulates everything I thought golf in Iceland would be. A short par 3 takes us over a water hazard. Behind the green is a dense thicket of dark green pines, hugged at their base by the iconic purple-blue Alaskan Lupin plant. A bright red sign directs us off stage to the right, up a winding path between two Flintstone style boulders to the next tee.
The tone of the round is refreshing, halfway breaks for sodid braud (lamb with bread), hot chocolate with Stroh (spiced rum) and cinnamon buns parse out the stresses of the round into digestible chunks. The golfers in the group strike a balance between competition, support and socialising: there’s quiet when others are playing their shots, but in between there’s little consideration for a golf tournament. We meander through the pines until we eventually reach the 18th and tally up our totals. Some of the group are satisfied with their afternoon's work, others take solace in the fact that ‘it can’t get any worse tomorrow’.
Since we teed off at a respectable hour we finished in time for dinner. Our watering hole for the evening is down the hill in the small harbour town. The typical duo of sushi followed by lamb and potatoes with red wine fills the gap created by a day on the course. Much of the party ventures forth into the bright night, but the golf obsessed among us are hungry for something else.
40 minutes north of Akureyri is the town of Husavik, where a small 9 hole golf course sits at the base of a purple valley. I’m conscious that the offer to play there is an act of politeness from our hosts. I look into Bogi and Gisli’s eyes to establish the sincerity of their offer and find nothing but optimism. I’m in good hands: these guys are obsessed. There must be something in the water here.