Hamburger Hittfeld

The rolling topography over slightly sandy soil certainly had the potential for a great, classic course and John Morrison was retained to produce it. It was to be one of his last projects and at the same time the first 18-hole course built in Germany after the Second World War.

In 2007 the club celebrated its 50th birthday and the layout, now indeed a classic, is still going strong. And why should this be so? Well, following a number of unsuccessful renovation attempts down the years, the club decided in 2004 to call in Canadian David Krause (a former Robert Trent Jones Sr. associate and an architect with wide experience in Germany) to reconstruct the course.

When the layout reopened, many commentators were agreed that Hamburger Hittfeld had once again regained its status as one of the best lesser-known golfing delights in the country.

Architect, David Krause, wrote the following article exclusively for us:

"Our office completed a study and began master planning the original John Morrison layout in 2000. There had been a few unhappy alterations made over the years, and the growth of trees had made play and especially maintenance of the course extremely difficult.

We altered the routing on a few holes to use adjacent property to provide some space on some very tight holes; namely 4 and 5. We also created a new long par 3, the 7th hole that plays from an elevated tee and gave space for new tees and a better line of play on the 8th.

The other big change was reverting the 13th back to a par 3 along the lines of the Morrison layout, but played at a different angle.

The big job was convincing the golf club members that they needed to give up their golf course for a whole year!

The location of the golf course did not allow a realistic opportunity to close 9 holes at one time, so we presented the master plan with the concept of doing the complete renovation - all grassed surfaces, bunkers, etc. in one phase. I was quite pleased to get more than 90% of the membership to agree to the proposal, although I must admit I was pretty nervous that evening.

The golf course was closed on June 14, 2004 and re-opened on July 2, 2005 and has been well received since. We are currently working on improvements to the practice facilities at the club."