Kungsbanan, Aland — the fun one

Gunnar Kobin
Jul 13
6 min read

Kungsbanan, Aland is totally different than Slottsbanan

This was the Sunday. Slottsbanan was the Saturday round — the one everyone photographs, water and castle and all that — and I've written about it separately. But Kungsbanan's the other 18 at Alands Golfklubb, the King's course, tucked back in the woods, and after two days of it I'll tell you something that surprised me: I had more fun on this one.

Not more to look at. Let's be clear. Slottsbanan wins the pictures every time, the bay does a lot of heavy lifting over there. But Kungsbanan is the more fun round of golf, and those aren't always the same thing.

Whose course it is

Both of Ålands Golfklubb's 18s came from the same hand: Jan Sederholm, the Swedish architect behind a string of good Nordic layouts — Himmerland in Denmark, Sarfvik in Finland, that sort of company. He laid both courses out on the old Kastelholm royal estate, the hunting ground Gustav Vasa used to chase elk around back when he was king of Sweden and Åland was his to roam. Slottsbanan came first, in the eighties; Kungsbanan followed, opening as the club's second 18 in the nineties. The Castle course later got the full Philip Spogård rebuild in 2020 that turned it into Finland's number one — but Kungsbanan is still very much Sederholm's, untouched by that treatment, and it plays like an older, more natural thing because it is one.

And it's no also-ran on the rankings, either. When the Finns last ranked their courses, Kungsbanan came in 20th in the country out of well over a hundred. So this isn't the throwaway second course you play because you've already paid for the day. It's a genuinely good golf course that just happens to live in the shadow of its famous sibling.

Sederholm's routing works with the land rather than fighting it — fairways following the contours between the rock ridges, greens sitting in clearings hacked out of the forest. It's honest Nordic parkland, and in high summer, when the daylight runs past ten at night, it firms up nicely.

An unusual start

It's the shorter of the two, which you feel from the off. And it opens with a par three, which is unusual — I can't think of many courses that hand you a short iron before you've even loosened up, and it throws you a bit. You want a driver in your hand on the 1st and instead you're stood there with a wedge trying to feel like you belong yet.

One warning right away: the Golfshot GPS was a touch off out here. Nothing wild — the green-centre distances were reading a little out, consistently, which I put down to a mapping issue more than anything wrong with the app itself. Enough that you'd club wrong if you took it as gospel. On Slottsbanan it was spot on. Here, give it a bit of side-eye and trust your own eyes when something looks off.

Wider than the trees suggest

Here's the thing you don't expect from a course routed through the woods: it's wide. Properly wide. You look down some of these holes framed by trees and brace for a tight, punishing drive, and then there's far more room than the eye tells you. That's a nice surprise and it makes the course a lot more playable than it looks standing on the tee. It's hilly, too — a fair bit of up and down — which adds to it.

The greens are the opposite of Slottsbanan's. Flatter, easier, slower. After a day of reading big contours and quick-but-soft surfaces on the Castle course, Kungsbanan's greens felt almost restful. Not pushover — nothing here is a pushover — but you're not sweating over every read the way you are next door.

And it's quiet. Genuinely quiet. Slottsbanan fills up because everyone wants the water and the castle, so it drags. Kungsbanan you get a bit of peace, and honestly that's half of why the round was more fun — you can just play.

Short but not easy

Don't let the yardage fool you. It's short, but it is not easy. There are a lot of doglegs — a real lot — so the driver isn't automatic off every tee, and you've got to think about shape and position more than raw length. And there's a long par five, the 9th, that plays straight into the wind and gives you a proper fight. It's a dogleg left with water down the left side of the fairway, so there's no bailing that way, and into that wind it just keeps going. I hit driver, then a three-wood — both into the teeth of it — and still had 160 metres left to the green. That's where "short course" quietly stops meaning "gentle course."

The front nine is the stronger half, and I'd stand by that. It hangs together, the holes have some variety and some bite, and it finishes with that brute of a 9th.

After the turn — dramatic, then a bit patchy

There's a kiosk after the 10th, which is well placed, because the 10th itself is worth pausing on — a dramatic downhill par five, the sort of hole where you stand on the tee looking down at the whole thing laid out and it just feels good to hit.

Then it goes a little flat. Literally. You get a couple of holes out on what's basically local countryside field — open, flat, not much drama — before the course tucks back into the woods for two good ones. The 15th heads out into the field again. And in general the back nine is clearly the weaker half. The 11th and 12th in particular feel forced in, like holes added to get the number up to eighteen rather than because the land wanted them there. Not bad exactly. Just filler between the good stuff.

The 18th — don't be a hero

The 18th is tricky, and I'll save you the mistake you will make playing it first time. Do not try to cut it. The temptation is to take driver around the corner of the dogleg, and driver around that corner will almost certainly end up out of bounds — I'd put money on it. There is a slope down and the fairway will be super narrow and there is now way the ball will stay in play. Play the layup to 150 instead, leave yourself a full shot in, and take your par like a sensible person. It's a hole that punishes greed and rewards the boring play, which I respect even as it annoys me.

Worth a word on this, actually, because the club's mid-decision on it. They're building a new 18th to replace the current one — the thinking being the present finishing hole is a good one but tricky, and they want something cleaner to close on. Here's my two cents, for whatever it's worth: leave both. The current 18th is tricky, yes, but it's more interesting for exactly that reason, and the new one — a flat, straight par five — is the safer, duller hole. Give players the choice. Let people who want the challenge play the old one and people who want the gentle finish play the new. Ripping out an interesting hole to install a straightforward one seems like the wrong trade to me.

The practical stuff

For anyone who hasn't read the Slottsbanan piece: this is a two-course club (three if you count the six-hole Prinsessan short course), and the facilities are a good deal better than you'd brace yourself for on a small Baltic island. The clubhouse is genuinely nice — modern, well kept, somewhere you're happy to sit rather than just pass through. Locker rooms are clean and properly done, with showers and a sauna, which after a long hilly walk out here is not nothing. And there's a real restaurant on site — an actual kitchen doing good food, not a sad reheated-panini counter — which matters when you're doing 36 holes over a weekend and want a proper lunch or a sit-down after. Plus that kiosk after the 10th for a mid-round coffee.

Green fees on Kungsbanan are noticeably gentler than on Slottsbanan, and the club does combination packages across the two courses that work out cheaper than booking each round on its own — worth an email to the club a season ahead if you're coming in July or August, because that's when it's busiest. You get in by ferry: Stockholm, Turku, or the longer overnight run from Tallinn, and the crossing's part of the trip rather than a chore to grind through first. The club sits about twenty-odd minutes northeast of Mariehamn at Kastelholm. GPS devices are fine — just don't lean on the Golfshot yardages here like I said.

So which one?

If you've only got time for one, and you want the views and the story to tell — Slottsbanan, no contest. That's the number-one course in Finland and it earns it.

But don't skip Kungsbanan if you're out here for a couple of days. It's the more enjoyable round, the quieter round, the one where you can actually breathe and just play golf. Flatter greens, wider than it looks, a genuinely good front nine, a couple of standout holes on the back, and a finishing hole with real teeth. It's not as pretty. It's more fun. And on a 36-hole weekend the two of them together make a lot more sense than either on its own — the Castle for the spectacle, the King's for the golf.