57 have profiled in these pages. His story has not been about building World Top 100 courses on pristine sites in the middle of nowhere, or right next to an ocean, but has rather been about helping to bring golf in quantity to a country where it was previously in very short supply. “There are about 740 golf courses in Germany now; that’s an increase of about 20 times in my lifetime,” he says. “If golf is to move further forward here, we need something big to push us ahead, something with a similar impact to Langer winning the Masters. We need more golf on TV, we need more top German players, and we need a Ryder Cup. There have been German bids for the Cup, but the political support isn’t there. Sometimes I think we are too serious in Germany! We can’t put enough effort behind something that is a leisure activity.” Germany has extremely stringent environmental restrictions, and Städler says that inevitably has a big impact on golf. When asked if, at the age of 74, he still has ambitions, he laughs. “I have not built a true links course, and I would very much like to,” he says. “But a true links is not now feasible in Germany – it would be impossible to get planning on a genuine links site.” It isn’t a links course, but Städler, along with his partner Reinmuth, has been at work for two years on the La Maviglia project in Puglia, southern Italy, on a classic Mediterranean landscape of maquis and olive groves, less than a kilometre from the Gulf of Taranto. But at the moment, the project is stalled. “We got planning consent for the project very quickly, but right now it has ground to a halt,” he says. “I hope this extraordinary project will be resumed soon and we’ll get to finish the course.” I hope so too. A new layout for Bades Huk – on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast – was completed in 2023 on the site of the abandoned Hohen Wieschendorf course Städler has worked at Rosendaelsche, one of oldest clubs in the Netherlands Photo: Rosendaelsche Golf Club
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