estonia Growing the Appetite for Golf

Estonian Golf & Country Club built its reputation on Sea power. Now it’s about to enter the Stone age.

Estonian, in suburban Tallin, aims to transform its nine-hole Stone course into what will essentially be a new 18-hole track, in the hope of creating one of the premier 36-hole complexes in the Old World. The club plans to hire what it calls “a headline course architect” this summer and to begin construction in the fall of 2013.

The re-imagined Stone course will complement Estonian’s 7,067-yard Sea course, the nation’s top-ranked venue and, according to Golf World, one of the top 100 tracks in Europe. Both courses were designed by Lassi Pekka Tilander and opened in 2006.

The upcoming investment is a reflection of Estonian’s optimism about the future. The club is located just a short drive east of the nation’s historic capital city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose charming medieval architecture has of late been drawing ever-larger numbers of vacationers and sight-seers. The tourist traffic has also benefited Estonian, which reports that it rang up a healthy 7 percent increase in rounds last year and expects another increase in 2012.

“We are seeing more and more visitors from overseas, particularly from the U.K.,” the club’s general manager told a local publication earlier this year. “The appetite for golf in Estonia is growing.”

With 36 holes, Estonian also believes it can grow the appetite for its luxury houses. Its accompanying community offers some of the best addresses in the former Soviet satellite, and the club likes to remind prospective home owners that it’s a link in the six-member chain of European Tour Properties, along with Kungsängen Golf Club in suburban Stockholm, Sweden, Fleesensee Golf & Country Club in Göhren-Lebbin, Germany, and other high-prestige clubs in Spain, Portugal, and Finland.

The new course will no doubt be more resident-friendly than the Sea course, which even the club admits is “a real challenge even for the golfer of the highest rank.”

I suspect that the architect who wins the commission will try to preserve the Stone track’s character, for it’s said to have “an air of links spirits that is so common to traditional British courses.”

The original version of this story first appeared in the May 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.