65 low cut will give the best results. But the hole can easily be played as a twoshotter, 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. 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. ROCK GOLF Six of the nine par threes at Rock Golf have water in play The near-island green of the seventh hole Photo: Jacob Sjöman
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