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Golf Club Igls. (1930 – 1942)
According to the yearbook of the German Golf Association from 1939 the Golf Club Igls e.V. was founded in 1930. On May 15, 1932, the German magazine ‘Golf’ reports, that the golf course was opened in 1931.
Freiherr von Gagern, co-owner of the Hotel Igler Hof, was the initiator of the club. He was assisted by Director Georg Schindler and a long-standing guest, Mr Petschek from Bohemia. At the foundation, the Innsbruck lawyer Dr. Karl Polaczek was elected president and Dr. Kurt Neugebauer vice-president. The technical and also sporting management was taken over by Georg Schindler, who was an experienced golfer because of his stays on the Adria of Brioni.
The golf course at Igls was laid out to the south of the hotel and stretched along the slopes of the Patscherkofel towards the Grünwalderhof. Although the course was rather short with 1,551 metres for 9 holes, it was very popular with the guests. It is said to have been the most international of all the courses that existed in Austria at the time.
The golf course was surrounded at an altitude of 900 metres, the first tee was directly at the Grandhotel Igler Hof in Igls in Tyrol, close to the Tyrolean capital Innsbruck, from where the course could be reached in 15 minutes by bus. From the entire golf course, there were beautiful views of the Brenner Mountains, the Stubai Glaciers, the Miminger mountain range and the Karwendel Mountains all the way to the Wilder Kaiser.
Here is a description of the course from 1933:
Hole 1: 275 m. Beautiful forest on the left, steep slope on the right. Very wide fairway without difficulties facilitates a quick start.
Hole 2: 132 m. A correctly played mashie brings the ball onto a lower green protected by bunkers and a water hazard.
Hole 3: 127m. The shot goes uphill over a ravine, onto the green cut into the mountainside.
Hole 4: 158m. Over a levelled, beautiful fairway to the green, which is protected by bunkers. The ball can only be kept on the green by a very accurately played shot. It is only too easy to overplay and land in the high grass behind the green.
Hole 5: 76m. A nice short shot. The green is very elevated.
Hole 6: 161m. An iron shot that must be played very straight, as trees and bushes form a boundary to the right and left of the sloping fairway. The green is defended by two bunkers and trees.
Hole 7: 154m. From the tee on a rocky knoll a magnificent view of the Stubai glacier world. The tee is located on a rocky hilltop.
Hole 8: 151m. A very accurate shot is required, as a water ditch has to be played over and the green, which lies low down, is close to the dense forest.
Hole 9: 317m. A charming footpath through the forest leads to the last tee, and after a rather difficult 4, the player returns to the first tee near the hotel, where the clubrooms are located.
A particular advantage of the Igls golf course was the fact that everywhere the tee was close to the previous green and there were no intersecting fairways. The golfing season lasted from May to October.
In 1934, the first golf tournament took place for the silver cup donated by the city of Innsbruck. The winner was Mrs. H.C. Tibout from New York. Hubert Baron Rosenberg-Redé from Zurich won a valuable silver vase donated by the Austrian Golf Federation as an honorary prize.
As the club was a purely private course of the Hotel Igler Hof, it had practically no members and no board of directors of its own. The club was run by the hotel director Georg Schindler, who was secretary and even golf instructor at the same time. The greenkeeper was Josef Zieher (1938).
The Second World War also put an end to this club in 1942 and the fairways were turned back into grain fields and potato fields.
Christoph Meister
October 2021
Above images from the Christoph Meister archive.