Greetings from Germany

[jimbo843]

Hello there. This is Jim: I'm a Brit who's been living in Germany for 10 years. Before I moved here, I played golf pretty regularly (but also pretty badly) in England. I moved to Germany to be with my wife (she's German) and we started a family. Apart from a few rounds with work when I've been travelling overseas, I haven't played for 10 years.

It's not easy, or cheap, to play golf in Germany, and apart from a few 6 hole short courses, you need a handicap and a club membership to be able to play at a course. But a renewed interest saw me sign up for a course of six lessons which you need to do before you're allowed out on the course here (you get a handicap of 54 at the end of it). The local club (see avatar) has a couple of Brit pros and they've been a great help in getting me hitting the ball reasonably consistently. I have my final test in the middle of June (need 11 Stableford points from 9 holes).

So I thought I'd join this forum to share with you what it's like learning golf in a foreign land, and let you all track my progress. I've just invested in some new clubs (for the first time ever - my set in England are some that I won in a bet!!), and really have found a passion again for hitting that tiny ball into a slightly larger hole a few hundred meters away.

Looking forward to making acquaintence with you all!

Jim

[Golf'nBiker]

Guten Tag, Jim!  Welcome. Sounds to me like getting on a golf course is as much a task as getting on the road in Germany..meaning acquiring a drivers license.

[Doug Green]

hello and welcome to the forum! hope to learn more about Germany's great golf courses.

[jimbo843]

Thanks for the welcome At first I was very skeptical about the whole point of doing a course. But I have to say, having almost been through it's done a few things: - given me about 18 hours of group lessons (which I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise) - got me known to the Pros, who in turn have introduced me to loads of the members - introduced me to 8 others who are also learning And when I read on here about the issues with slow play that seem to crop up because people can't hit further tha the ladies tee, I have to say thats the main point of it - not to let slow players out onto a course before they're ready.