About Vallda Golf & Country Club
THE SCOTTISH INLAND LINKS OF THE WEST COAST
As a playing rights holder at Vallda Golf & Country Club - The Scottish Inland Links of The West Coast - you play on a unique course that is ranked as one of Sweden's top ten. A classic Scottish inland links, meticulously maintained and beautiful, designed by England's most legendary golf architecture firm. An exciting course, full of atmosphere and fun challenges for all types of players. Vallda Golf & Country Club offers something quite unique in Swedish golf - a high-tech course that smells sweetly of classic Scottish golf and is wholly derived from the Scottish golf tradition, albeit located on the beautiful Swedish west coast.
As a playing rights holder, you have free access to the entire facility during the season and, of course, only by doing so, have a great opportunity to improve your golf game.course, only by doing so, have a great opportunity to improve your golf game.
Our staff Pro's are on hand at Vallda Golf & Country Club to offer their services to improve your game, or perhaps to help you try out clubs that suit you and your swing.
You also have access to the padel court for one hour of free play per day and also have the opportunity to play tennis on site, in partnership with Vallda Tennis.
We also care about business and networking. Vallda Network is our business concept to encourage networking and good relationships between businesses. Old and new relationships benefit from spending some time together, with or without clubs, and Vallda Network arranges the conditions. We want to provide companies with an opportunity for good company and encourage pleasant and developing relationship building.
To top it all off, Vallda G&CC offers you the opportunity to eat fantastic food. The Vallda Restaurant serves you wonderful food and drink with fingertip sensitivity and commitment. If you just want to enjoy our cosy atmosphere for a while, sit down in the inviting lounge and perhaps sip on a refreshment or have a coffee.
Vallda Golf & Country Club is a vibrant golf club for everyone - for family and friends. We strive to always offer our playing rights holders and guests great opportunities for fellowship and a truly unique and delightful experience, no matter which part of our facility you play.
Vallda Golf & Country Club is part of the Ernst Rosén Group, one of the largest private property owners in Gothenburg. The company was founded in the 1950s by master builder Ernst Rosén and today the fourth generation is active in the company. Ernst Rosén builds, manages and develops properties in the central parts of Gothenburg, Alingsås and Lerum. In addition to Vallda Golf & Country Club, the group also includes Barsebäck Golf, Aranäs AB, Flodén Byggnads AB, Örgryte Bostads and the Nääs Fabriker hotel and conference centre.
HISTORY
The early vision remains
From the very beginning, the vision was for Vallda Golf & Country Club to be a club especially for family and friends. As a club, we put this ambition first, which is reflected in all areas: a club for family and friends, generous towards juniors, but just as importantly, we also want to have a really good course - a golf course among Sweden's top ten!
We want to offer a place to come even if you don't have your clubs with you, where you can eat great food and maybe just enjoy the nice atmosphere for a while. The concept of Vallda Golf & Country Club as a place for family life and for good friendship is also a priority from the financial perspective, where Vallda runs its entire business with respect for the cost balance.
At present, Ernst Rosén AB is the sole owner of Vallda Golf & Country Club and Reine Rosén from the family of owners of this company is also one of the founders. But from the beginning, four visionaries founded Vallda G&CC: August Lindeblad, Peter Teiffel, Anders Rabbe and Reine Rosén.
The creation of Vallda Golf & Country Club
August Lindeblad, Peter Teiffel, Anders Rabbe and Reine Rosén each had a vision, a desire and a longing to create an outstanding golf course. The love of British golf was in all of them and in particular the Scottish golf tradition had captured their golfing hearts after many years of playing, around Scotland as well as in many other parts of the world. But Scotland has captured the hearts of many golfers in a very special way - the cradle of golf. On different paths, the four founders were led together. Each nurtured their vision and worked their way forward step by step, adding ideas and opportunities to each other in different directions, for what would ultimately become a shared vision. One person also led on to the other, in a natural progression. When Reine Rosén joined, the early set-up had similarities to what he himself wanted to create and also offered new possibilities. As a builder, Reine could not only contribute to the vision, but also act as a natural mentor to the group and, not least, ensure financial stability. It took a number of years, but a lot fell into place, just based on the different skills, abilities and possibilities of the founders, when the group eventually became complete. Inspiration was in abundance, as was a broad and solid golfing knowledge of all in the constellation.Actually it was 86 hectares of meadowland, lushly embedded in oak hills and stately deciduous trees, but there was no sand here, which might seem to be an absolute prerequisite for an inland link. There was only clay. A firm and good clay, but no sand.
It would take a magnificent masterclass in engineering and golf architecture to get it all right. Right from the start. The project would continue to require motivation, dedication, knowledge and a great deal of work, along with experience and resources of all kinds.
One outstanding quality that the founders proved to possess was the ability to seek out the right people to involve in the creation of the golf course at Vallda. They steered with great unity towards the same goal and made conscious choices to realise the vision of a high quality Scottish course. Nothing could be left to chance or strive in any other direction. The vision was unwavering among the four founders and it needed to be.
The legendary British golf architecture firm, Hawtree Limited, which had been designing golf courses since 1912, was asked to design the unique course at Vallda that would match the vision of the founders. Martin Hawtree accepted with a very enthusiastic response: "We believe that this is a tremedous site to develop a golf course on and we are very excited to be involved with this project".
Considering that Hawtree Limited has hundreds of courses around the world to its credit and a number of these are truly legendary courses, it was an even more fantastic response that Martin Hawtree gave to the enquiry. Hawtree Limited boasts courses such as Royal Birkdale in England, Portmarnock and Lahinch in Ireland and Royal Melbourne in Australia, and Martin Hawtree's greens are a hallmark of his work. It should be mentioned that international star designer Caspar
Grauballe, who was working for Hawtree Limited at the time, was also involved in the design of the Vallda G&CC golf course.
Martin Hawtree's professional eye for the area at Vallda and his subsequent written review in which he accepts the request for ribbon design with such enthusiasm, is pure poetry and well worth reproducing in the history. This is how the well-respected band designer described what he saw ahead at Vallda:
"From the steep rock faces and mature woodland to the open gentle rolling agricultural land and the natural wetlands the course will boast a vast array of settings for the holes throughout the course. The proposed course will take it's inspiration from the classical British heath-land courses with characteristic bunkers and intriguing rolling greens. New water features are also planned to challenge the players on several holes with multiple options for reaching the green".
Martin Hawtree and Caspar Grauballe's stylish course design was also technically demanding. The solid clay on the site was excellent, but would require countless tons of sand over it and a total of 4 miles of drainage and cover drainage that included the playing surface itself. The result was a high-tech track design and one of Sweden's most well-drained courses, where the intended hard playing surface can be kept dry and allow the ball to bounce and roll, even in the most demanding weather conditions.
Two very important people for Vallda G&CC's early development and whose groundwork is still important, should be mentioned:
The first of these, is another legend - the English agronomist George R Shiels who devised Vallda's strategy for creating, over time, a high quality fairway by dressing up a vegetation profile with sand which, properly executed generates a course of the highest order, but requires a great deal of both time and knowledge.
The other, a now very big star among greenkeepers - Stefan Nilsson who already in 2012 received the award "Greenkeeper of the Year" by the Swedish Greenkeeper Association, for his meritorious work at Vallda G&CC.
Stefan Nilsson was Vallda's first employed greenkeeper and has contributed considerably to the quality and growth of the Vallda course through his accuracy and strategic know-how. Stefan works according to the motto that the management of the playing surfaces should be in harmony with nature, which not only provides a strong playing experience but also a stable and long-term sustainability of the course.
The ground-breaking ceremony for Vallda Golf & Country Club took place in 2007, and in 2009 the course was completed and opened to immediate acclaim and publicity. From the outset, renowned Michelin chef Ingemar Lyxell, who, together with his wife Ingrid, had run the upmarket gourmet restaurant 28+ in Gothenburg, was brought on board. Ingemar creates the food and Ingrid, with her special skills, creates the right atmosphere and pleasant appearance. The Lyxells, an experienced and interacting pair of restaurateurs, fitted in well with Vallda G&CC's all-pervasive quality philosophy.
Thanks to the ultra-modern construction, meticulous care and, not least, great passion, the course always has excellent playing surfaces. Today, Vallda Golf & Country Club is ranked among the top ten courses in the country. Vallda has also been named the most fun course in Sweden.
Vallda G&CC has also hosted a number of fine competitions such as the Skandia Tour Elit competition, SM match play juniors and JSM.
In 2021, Vallda G&CC was the proud host course for the "Scandinavian Mixed - Hosted by Henrik Stenson & Annika Sörenstam", which received a very positive echo in the international media.
In short, Vallda G&CC's history can be summed up by saying that a lot has been achieved in about 15 years, since the first sod was turned to build what is today Vallda Golf & Country Club's "The Scottish Inland Links Of The West Coast" - undeniably one of Sweden's best golf courses with a truly unique overall product in Swedish golf. We are extremely proud of this. Proud and very grateful to everyone who has shared our journey in different ways.
In 2014, Ernst Rosén AB bought out the other co-owners to operate and manage Vallda Golf & Country Club as sole owner through the companies Deer Mountain Golf AB and Vallda Golf AB.
This also means that Reine Rosén, who has been one of the driving visionaries and in many ways the backbone and mentor in the creation of Vallda G&CC, is still strongly committed to the operation and continued development of Vallda Golf & Country Club.
Ten years as an idealistic course manager at Kungsbacka Golf Club gave Reine a wealth of experience in course management and valuable insights into course design and further development.
This interest, knowledge and a lifetime of experience in construction and facility design, underpins Reine's work on the Vallda course design, from its inception and every step of the way.
The strategic document "Masterplan" for the Valldabanan, which describes each hole and its design adjustments until final completion, is mainly Reine's work and he still has the overall responsibility for all adjustments in the golf course design and for the development of the holes.
