“I played in it for West Germany, and the creativity of the course blew me away – the use of railway sleepers, a tee in the ocean, which isn’t there now. If big professional tournaments had been held there, I’m sure it would be much higher up the rankings than it is – it is a wonderful course, and to this day, Pete Dye’s work inspires me the most, even though his fondness for creating very difficult courses isn’t something I have followed.” Seeing Teeth of the Dog in 1974 set Städler’s mind going. “I started to think about golf course design as a career but, at that time, it wasn’t a business in Germany: there was no way you could have made a living at it. Von Limburger was still around, and still working – I met him in about 1980 on a site, he died in 1981 – and architects like Frank Pennink and Don Harradine had done a few courses around the country. But there was nowhere near enough work for anyone to consider it as a sensible career.” He therefore studied economics and went to work for Deutsche Bank. But everything connected with golf in Germany changed on 14 April 1985 when Bernhard Langer won the Masters and kickstarted the great German golf boom. “The very instant that Bernhard sank the winning putt, I knew that everything would change,” says Städler. “I thought to myself, ‘Go train yourself until you know enough to get into this business’. I got a bunch of books from American golf architects, and, I set myself to learning everything I could about golf architecture. Städler finally founded his golf design business in 1987 and, already a well-known figure in German golf circles, he hasn’t looked back since. “I did my first jobs, I think pretty well, and got good references from them,” he says. “Golf was exploding in Germany at the time, and given that the work I did was well-received, it wasn’t hard to get more. The first 55 Christoph Städler (centre) with colleagues Philipp Fleischhauer and Achim Reinmuth, on the La Maviglia site in southern Italy where they hope to see construction move forward soon “ The very instant that Bernhard sank the winning putt, I knew that everything would change”
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