Dermot Gilleece observes the colourful and eccentric golf history of a Nordic nation
Golf
Finland’s splendid Linna course, about 100 kilometres north of Helsinki.
Midnight Finnish! Every sane golfer knows that their great game was invented by Cuchulain up there in the Cooley Mountains all those years ago. Then the Romans tried to claim it for themselves, along with the Dutch and, of course, those inferior celts from north of Hardian’s Wall, the most brazen copyists of all. Now, it emerges that the Finns, of all people, also attempted to get in on the act. Apparently it’s not enough that Mikko Ilonen should have wiped the eyes of our brave amateurs by capturing the West of Ireland title at Enniscrone in 1999, only to return 15 years later to win the Irish Professional Open, no less, at Fota Island. Just think of it, in every club he visits, the bold Mikko will be able to boast a double that only elite Irish practitioners such as Padraig Harrington, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry have managed to achieve. As it happens, a popular story around golfing circles in Helsinki, concerns two young reindeer herders, Paarvi Tuulvitskoog and Olaaferinn ‘Ollie’ Ruukinaanaluu, who took to batting around a frozen herring with a finely polished antler. The idea was to see which of them could slide the slippery kipper into a far-off, empty vodka bottle in the fewest number of strokes. They called their game ‘paar en fisken’, which means hit the fish. Or ‘paar’ for short. When the lads discovered that the Scots had been playing a similar game for some centuries past, however, they immediately sold their animals and moved to Glasgow where they became besotted with the royal and ancient pursuit. The upshot of this episode was that paar, or golf as it soon became known, found a permanent and revered place in Finnish sports consciousness. Indeed it led to the founding of the Helsinki Golf Club in 1932. A likely story, I hear you mutter. Whatever the truth of these antler-waving antics, golf in Finland can have a fascinating side to it. One of the most intriguing of its 160 courses is the Green Zone GC, located directly on the border with Sweden. The result is that roughly half the holes are in either country. At one time, clubhouse attendants were only too happy to supply visitors with stamped customs forms. Especially interesting is the fact 42 Senior Times l September - October 2020 l www.seniortimes.ie
As Noel Coward might have observed, mad golfers in Finland go out in the midnight sun. And this was July 12th, about a month later than the ideal time of year for such an exercise.
that the short sixth hole actually traverses the international boundary and time-zone. Which means that your fourball could tee off in Finland at 12.50pm and putt out in Sweden at noon. Having visited the scene of midnight golf on a trip to Reykjavik for the European Junior Championship in July 1981, I was delighted to be given the opportunity of actually playing in such conditions, 26 years later. That was when I found myself looking down the fairway of my final hole into gathering gloom. It was still possible to make out the desirable landing area for a drive, between bunkers right and left, about 220 yards away. Further into the distance, cars with their headlights on were approaching from the clubhouse area, down a road skirting the left-hand side of the fairway. On the right was Lake Katuma, which is frozen from mid-December until late March. Now, its gently-lapping waters were accompanied by birdsong. At eventide? Well, that would be stretching things insofar as my watch told me it was now 11.50pm. By the time I reached the green, it would be the witching hour on Finland’s splendid Linna course, about 100 kilometres north of Helsinki.
