Sporting Swedes took to the whites last weekend to compete in the country’s second annual snow golfing competition. The tournament in Kiruna, northern Sweden, saw Tomas Wågberg and Susanne Mellgren crowned the country’s unofficial champions.
Although there are international competitions in Austria, Switzerland and Greenland, it is thought that the fusion sport was first invented by British author Rudyard Kipling, who apparently began painting golf balls red and whacking them around his garden in 1890s while we was writing The Jungle Book.
“Those who are golf-crazy find it really exciting to play golf in the winter,” Mellgren, who came second last year, told the local Norrländska Social Demokraten newspaper (NSD).
Budding snow golfers are advised against using graphite clubs, which can shatter in the cold weather, but otherwise the game is fundamentally the same.
“It’s quite special to play on the snow, but it’s just like normal golf anyway. You need to have a clean hit, and the ball goes where you aim it,” Mellgren told the paper. “You need to have more precision in the winter,” he added.
The first singing.
Somewhere
the soft wind
becomes an
experience
that calls
the desire of
an inner
intention.
Francesco Sinibaldi