Any number of voices in the golf industry have spent a lot of time in recent years proclaiming the need for more ‘alternative golf’ facilities: that is to say, facilities that are not full-size eighteen-hole golf courses.
The problem is that it isn’t easy to make a return on investment on golf facilities of any kind, and ‘alternative facilities’ is code for places that are quicker and cheaper to play than full-sized courses. Cheaper means less revenue, especially since there seems still to be a mindset among golfers that anything that is not a full-sized eighteen-hole course is a lesser experience (and therefore worth less money). Combine that with the simple fact that the world already has many thousands of golf courses which, having been constructed many years ago, have long since amortised their development costs, and it is easy to see why developing alternative facilities, though superficially attractive, is not the most appealing proposition for many investors.
Rock Golf is rather different. Located in the municipality of Siunto, about 25 miles west of Finland’s capital Helsinki, it is a nine-hole par-three course. Though almost entirely surrounded by the 54-hole Pickala club, it is not connected with it, except in that developer Kari Karvinen is a long-time member – indeed a board member – of Pickala. The site, which totals 45 hectares (111 acres), of which 17 hectares are used for golf, was not used for any of the Pickala courses, because it was thought to be too difficult – for which, as the course’s name hints, read rocky.
The course was originally the brainchild of local businessman Jussi Nurmio. He was friendly with Karvinen, who was, at the time, retired after a long career as an entrepreneur in a number of businesses. He called his friend, and asked him, ‘Do you want to build the world’s best par-three course with me?’ Karvinen says he thought about it for around 30 seconds before saying ‘yes’, but that if Nurmio had simply asked him to build a par-three course, he would have declined. Talk about an elevator pitch!
Six of the nine par threes at Rock Golf have water in play (Image: Tilander Golf Design)
Nurmio had already been in contact with the Finnish golf architect Lassi Pekka Tilander, and he was contracted to design the course. The project was launched in February 2022, originally as a standalone golf course, and the rest of 2022 was spent clearing the site. Most of the course and infrastructure was constructed in 2023; a local contractor handled bulk earthworks, and NV Golf, the Finnish arm of the well-known European contractor Nelson & Vecchio, handled the golf build, with shaper Graham Foster doing a lot of the work. Rock was seeded early in the 2024 season, and it opened in June 2025. During the build, Karvinen bought Nurmio out, and became the sole owner.
At some point during the process, the developers realised they had enough land to incorporate a housing component into Rock; now, two companies, Rock Golf and Rock Properties, own different parts of the site, and, at the time of GCA’s visit, the roads that will serve the housing development were under construction.
Rock has unarguably been built to a very high standard. The entire golf course site has been sandcapped: 20 centimetres (eight inches) of sand in most of the play areas and 30cm on greens.
Where the site was not the eponymous rock, it was mostly clay, so the sandcapping was probably sensible. Those involved with the course are coy about how much blasting was done as part of the build, admitting it was more than originally intended.
A lot of ‘kuntta’ – Finnish heather – has been transplanted onto the site. Most of the bunkers have it on the out-of-play edge, and it is elsewhere on the site too – and it has done what heather generally does on golf courses, which is to help embed the course in its site and make it look as though it belongs there. The bunkers themselves are lined with the CapillaryFlow system – including the Wash Box, which will be used to ensure the sand stays clean and in good condition – and edged using Durabunker.
The site, which is essentially both sides of a canyon, was rather swampy at the bottom before construction, so the architect built a connected chain of lakes in the middle of it: most of the holes feature water in some way. It is unarguably a very beautiful spot. “The site is beautiful because of the rock,” says Tilander. “You couldn’t design a normal golf course on this site – you wouldn’t be able to fit long holes onto it because of all the rock. It was ordained by nature to be a par-three course.”
Ordained by nature, and a lot of engineering. As with blasting, those involved are reluctant to discuss the construction cost, and obviously the cost of the infrastructure for the housing development will be substantial, but there is no doubt that many millions of euros have been spent here. No matter how good the golf at Rock is, a nine-hole par three course will never show a return on so large an investment; if it is to pay, it will be because of the housing.
Rock is without doubt a beautiful and fun place to play golf. Tilander says he wanted all nine holes to play downhill, and that the first is the only one that doesn’t (only slightly). There is a great deal of water in play: the architect says he is a big fan of links golf and doesn’t really like water hazards, but he has for sure built a lot of them here. Tilander further says that there is only one hole, the eighth, which has a compulsory water carry from all tees; in this he is basically correct, but even from the K tees (the four sets are labelled R, O, C and K), players will find themselves contending with water on most holes. Finland is famous for its many lakes: now Rock Golf exists, it has several more.
The third hole wraps around one of the site’s lakes (Photo: Jacob Sjöman)
My favourite hole was one without water: the sixth, the longest on the course, at 221 metres (239 yards) from the back R tee. The hole slopes from right to left; there is a rock outcropping to the right front of the green. It is not a hole on which to hit a hook; a hard, low cut will give the best results. But the hole can easily be played as a two-shotter, and the green, which rocks(!) and rolls its way to the back, screams out for a running approach. The eighth hole plays across one of the lakes, and on the far side of the water, an attractive rock face rises from the surface. I didn’t see a ball strike the face; many will, and what will happen to them is anybody’s guess. Some may go straight up, and end back in the agua, others may carom wildly into who-knows-what kind of trouble; some may even ricochet onto the green. A fun hole for sure.
Tilander’s greens include a couple with quite extravagant steps in them, but these are not tiers that divide the surface into front and back segments, but rather into left and right, as on a couple of holes at Huntercombe in England. The third hole includes a bunker on the low left side that is at the bottom of a large slope in the green; if the great Dane Thomas Bjorn ever comes to play Rock, he may be triggered with painful memories of the sixteenth at Royal St George’s.
The near-island green of the seventh hole (Photo: Jacob Sjöman)
Contractor David Nelson says: “A good friend of mine said, ‘If you break par, I will buy your lunch’. After playing it for the fourth time last week, that has still not happened. Although the course is playable, it’s not a great introduction to golf for beginners, but the challenge of par is real and that’s what draws you back to it regardless of your skill level. We built the course over two Finnish construction seasons – it had its challenges as every time we put a spade in the ground it was either solid rock or blue liquid clay. However, the client’s commitment to creating the very best course never faltered and with our own dedicated staff, client’s project team and Lassi, the challenges were solved to create this beauty we see today.”
I like Rock. I cannot say whether or not it is the best par-three course in the world, I haven’t seen enough of the candidates to judge, but it is a lot of fun and will for sure attract people and groups for whom the ability to play golf in no more than 90 minutes is very appealing. The course’s clubhouse would be very nice at a lot of quite grand eighteen-hole clubs, let alone here; the hospitality on offer is top drawer. It deserves to succeed, although for certain it needs the housing development to do well if it is ever to make a return on the large sums its investors have spent on it. I hope it will.
This article first appeared in the October 2025 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.