Hamburger Golf Club Falkenstein

About the club

Hamburger-Falkenstein was for half a century, from its opening in 1906 as a nine on the grounds of a venerable rural mansion, the top club in Germany and the site of numerous tournaments. Over time the club's membership expanded and Harry S. Colt was brought in in the late 1920s to make add a second nine. The course that emerged is a relatively small, forested layout that exploits the rolling land and soil conditions similar to those southwest of London (and indeed the Hamburger-Falkenstein would fit right in next to Worplesdon or Woking, if not Wentworth or Sunningdale). The club hosted the German Open a number of times up through 1981, the year Bernhard Langer earned his first national championship. The course is superb evidence of the quality of at least a few pre-war golf layouts on the Continent; it's just too bad that recent renovations have significantly altered Colt's signature bunkering.