The World's most Extreme Golf Courses
(the world's geographically most remote and
climatically most extreme, the toughest and greatest golf courses)
Want to experience the ultimate golf challenge ? Take the Awesome Eight Golf Challenge, a concept invented by Robin Sieger, a motivational speakers and a self-taught extreme athlete, and his friend Neil Laughton, who has organised and led adventurous expeditions all over the World and is one of a handful of people to have climbed the "7 Summits" - the highest mountain on each continent.
Robin Sieger at Furnace Creek,
The world's lowest golf course
(214 feet below sea level)
To complete the Awesome Eight Golf Challenge golfers must play eight of the most remote and climatically most extreme golf courses in the world within the span of a year. The only condition is that they carry their clubs, not using any caddie or cart.
The philosophy behind the challenge is to prove that it is not extraordinary people who do extraordinary things, but ordinary people
who choose to prove the sceptics wrong. All is needed is a powerful 'can do' approach.
The Awesome eight includes the following extreme golf courses:
The world's Coldest Golf course: North Star, Alaska
North Star may be the only golf course that includes an animal checklist on its scorecard. They even have a local rule stating that "When a raven or fox steals a golf ball, a replacement may be dropped without penalty at the scene of the crime." The course is underlain by permafrost, creating an ever changing pattern of dips, swales, and mounds reminiscent of the great courses of Scotland.
The world's coldest golf course
North Star Golf Club, Fairbanks Alaska, -26˚C
Photo courtesy of Robin Sieger
Prepare for a sauna hot golf round at Alice Springs Golf Club, one of the top ten desert courses in the world. The course is set in the foothills of the majestic MacDonnell Ranges. Sieger and Laughton remember the extremely friendly welcome as being "not far of the type returning astronauts are used too."
Read more about Alice Springs and other of the world's toughest golf courses on our World's hardest golf courses page.
How do you determine which is the highest golf course in the world ?
According to record books Tuctu, in Peru is the highest golf course culminating at 14,400 feet (4,401), but as the course is not in playing shape, Sieger settled on La Paz Golf Club, in Bolivia. Read more about La Paz Golf Club on our World's hardest golf courses page.
The world's highestt golf course
La Paz, Bolivia, 10650 feet (3,246m)
The world's Most Southerly: Ushuaia, Argentina
The World's Lowest Golf course: Furnace Creek, California
Furnace Creek Golf course has its first tee 214 feet (65m) below sea level.
.
.
.
Golf-information.info 2005-2011 © All rights reserved. Photos courtesy of Robin Sieger.
No part of Golf-information.info may be copied, distributed, printed or used on another website without the owner's written permission.
The world's Hottest Golf Course: Alice Springs, Australia
The World's Highest Golf course: La Paz, Bolivia
The world's Most Northerly golf course: North Cape, Norway
At 55 degrees latitude, close to Cape Horn, a strong cold wind from the Antarctic regularly scours the Ushuaia Golf Club in the Tierra del Fuego National Park, Argentina.
Sieger and Laughton at
the Most Southern, Ushuaia GC, Argentina
With its 6-hole course, two par-4s and four par 3s, the North Cape Golf Club lacks the demands of a challenging course. However, the club offers the unique experience to play golf in the land of the midnight sun, i.e. 24 hours a day, from mid-May to the end of August. As Artic Circle Norwegians have no sense of territory, the club also has a local rule: even if the ball lands into one of
The World's Toughest Golf Course: Ko'olau, Hawaii
the unfenced gardens that border the course, you are allowed to pitch it back onto the course.
The Awesome Eight participants are probably the only ones to ever have walked the Ko'olau, as buggies are compulsory on this course, recognized as one of the toughest in the world !
To successfully complete the challenge, golfers must present photographic proof with signed cards by local officials. Golfers who succeed, will be issued a certificate, granting them membership to the Awesome Eight Golf Society, the most elite yet least exclusive club in the world, as its counts only two members in its four years of existence. Or, to put it differently, no one else has since succeeded in completing the challenge. In February 2006 the record still stood at 364 days for all eight courses.
And finally, of course, the world's Greatest and Oldest of all golf courses: St Andrews, Old Course, Scotland.
Extreme Golf:
The World's Most Unusual, Fantastic And Bizarre Courses
by Duncan Lennard
More information:
Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die :
Golf Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations
(Hardcover)
by Chris Santella
More information:
iGolf neo Pocketsize Golf GPS
A handy golf-course aid that automatically displays the distances to key points on any golf course in the world.
More information:
Clicgear 2.0 Push Golf Cart
The most compact push cart in the industry.
Folds to 24" x 15" x 13"
More information:
2009 Official PGA Tour Guide
The official information-packed guide for the 2009 PGA TOUR season. Golf professionals from 19 countries led by 74 international players compete in 18 states and five countries outside the U.S. Includes 2009 schedules, player biographies, tournament histories, records and statistics.
More information:
