Mölle GK

Task: Highlight the uniqueness of Mölle. Clearer holes with adjustment of cutting lines, and identify if it is possible to find more flat positions. Review the design and placement of bunkers. Can we replace any?

Some results:

• Significantly more defined playing surfaces which I solved with adjustment of cutting lines and cutting heights.
• More flat positions.
• Fewer number of bunkers and more runoff areas cut as fore green.
• More holes with sea view.
• Aesthetically more beautiful.

Masterplan 

A small excerpt from the Masterplan:

What you see is what you get

Most golf clubs are driven forward by entrepreneurs in the business world. Therefore, most board and committee meetings are about practical tasks, what will happen in the near future, how the statutes should be adjusted, how things should work at the club etc. But, hand on heart what is it that in a few seconds determines one’s attitude to the club?

It’s how it looks, in the surroundings, around the clubhouse, on the course.

Sense of Place

The first requirement you place on a good product is that it should have or give something beyond the ordinary. Something that others do not have. And then of course it is important as a seller to highlight this, not hide it. Mölle thus has things that no other club in Sweden has, and these are the ones I go into below. But before I do that, I want to mention a detail that can be missed, namely that Kullaberg is probably Sweden’s most carefully researched natural area. It has been searched by mainly geologists, archaeologists and biologists from near and far, but most from nearby Lund University where countless dissertations have dealt with most things from the Stone Age people’s kitchen middens to the now extinct Rubus kullensis, a blackberry variant that only existed on Kullaberg.

Many of the guests at Kullagårdens Wärdshus were during the first half of the 20th century top-class researchers and in Ransgården had year after year a Nobel laureate his summer residence. If you turn back the clock even further, many cultural personalities made a pilgrimage up to what was then the wild mountain. During a fifty-year period around the turn of the century 1900, Mölle and Kullaberg finally became a popular culture’s dwelling with communal baths and society gossip. If you live in the heart of this science and to some extent also culture’s Mecca, you cannot just ignore it if you are interested in highlighting the uniqueness of the place.

In this context, I would like to praise Mölle GK for the latest anniversary book, because it lifts the story of Mölle Golf Club. Every good club must have a story, because most things that are fun become even more fun if they can be enjoyed on a deeper level.

Back to the expression “Sense of Place”.

The expression describes that each place gives a certain feeling, from murky, difficult to read, to clear. In the tourism industry, of course, a clear “sense of place” is an asset. You know what you get even before you order the trip. In my little book about course development, which you hopefully read, I tell about “Capability” Brown (capability was of course a nickname). It is said that it was not God who created England, but “Capability” who managed to build 300 square kilometers of castle park during his lifetime. Before he accepted an assignment he decided whether the place had sufficient “capability” - ability to become an enhanced version of itself. Which of course would result in a clear “sense of place”.

Can one describe “Sense of Place”, the Mölle feeling, for Mölle Golf Club?

Three characteristics that can all be clarified:

1. The nature outside the fields of Kullagårdar. Since the Danish times and perhaps even further back, the land was part of Kulla Fälad, which mainly consisted of meadows and heathland with a touch of a. Kullaberg was perceived as barren, according to Linnaeus in 1749. With the Physiographic Society in Lund taking over the management of the mountain, the overgrowth of the former pasture landscape increased, and the main message to the club was "do not disturb anything." Kullaberg and the course became an increasingly shady place with associated disadvantages for biodiversity and turf quality (the more shade, the worse the grass growth). Therefore, it is pleasing that MGK's management plan now focuses on restoring the old heathland, which will benefit light-demanding herb vegetation and the important grass quality along the course for golfers.

   The golf course and its surroundings are increasingly characterized by the open landscape, where, for example, the juniper bushes and the views of the sea have been enhanced. This is the first of the three fundamental elements of MGK's "Sense of Place," Möllekänsla!

2. The old farming. "Ur-Kullagården," now called Ransgården, where only the two-wing buildings remain, was divided into two farming units around 1830, where the new Kullagården developed during the 19th century. The buildings, including the club's main building, including the "stenoren," the typical stone pavement in the courtyard, evoke thoughts of the "Edvard Persson environment," the classic Skåne farm, well-known to those of us who live down here, exotic to non-Skåne residents. The historical Skåne farm is the second fundamental element of MGK's "Sense of Place." Its concept has mainly been preserved, but there are details that can be improved.

3. The main building with Kullagården's Inn and the golf club's extension. The main building with Kullagården's Inn and the golf club's extension. Buildings strongly influence the impression one gets of a place, and at MGK, this becomes particularly noticeable when standing in front of the Inn's entrance. The building, which replaced the previous lower and more typically Skåne residential building, was erected in 1916 in an "English style" with elements of the contemporary national romanticism, mainly indoors. The lower, extended clubhouse part with its blunter roof pitch does not quite match the original building in terms of style but is still considered a reasonable part of the whole. The English style of the main building is the third fundamental element of MGK's "Sense of Place."Buildings strongly influence the impression one gets of a place, and at MGK, this becomes particularly noticeable when standing in front of the Inn's entrance. The building, which replaced the previous lower and more typically Skåne residential building, was erected in 1916 in an "English style" with elements of the contemporary national romanticism, mainly indoors. The lower, extended clubhouse part with its blunter roof pitch does not quite match the original building in terms of style but is still considered a reasonable part of the whole. The English style of the main building is the third fundamental element of MGK's "Sense of Place."