Slottsbanan, Aland — Finland's number one

Gunnar Kobin
Jul 13
7 min read

Slottsbanan in Aland is one very unlikely destination for golf but it is really worth it.

Most golfers just never think about the water between Sweden and Finland. And the ones who do usually go "ah, too far" and that's the end of it. Which, look, fair. You do have to get a boat. But you come out the other side in this weird little self-governing pocket of Finland that flies its own flag and speaks Swedish and doesn't feel Finnish at all once you're actually there. Signs, menus, the guy at the coffee machine — Swedish, all of it. Doesn't feel like anywhere else I've been either. And that, if I'm honest, was most of why I wanted to go.

I came in from Tallinn on the night boat. Rolled into Mariehamn about five in the morning, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds — off the ship half-asleep into a quiet harbour before the town's even up. So I wrote off the first day. Didn't touch a club. Slept it off, wandered about, let the crossing wear off. Then played both courses over the weekend: one on the Saturday, the other on the Sunday. And back on the night boat after. I could have actually done it also in two days simply checking in to hotel early in the morning, getting some more hours of sleep and then play first round in the afternoon.

The round I'm on about here was off the 54 tees — 71.0, 138 slope, 5,956 metres. Not the tips. But don't get comfortable with that number, because the second the wind comes off Slottssundet Bay it's plenty of golf, and off that bay it comes and comes. Card wasn't clean. I'll not pretend it was. Picked up on a couple once it stopped mattering, and I'd rather just say so than make up a score.

Right, few things before you tee off. There's a Trackman range, which out here is a nicer touch than you'd expect — warm up properly, honestly, you'll want to. And the layout isn't a normal eighteen. It's three loops of six, each one looping back to roughly the same place, and there's a kiosk up top so a coffee or a sausage is never far. So the whole front-nine-back-nine thing — forget it, there isn't one. First loop goes off into the trees and up over a bit of hill. Other two run down along the water, and that's your bay, your castle, all the postcard stuff. Worth knowing for how you pace yourself, because some of those green-to-tee walks are long. Long enough I'd let you take a buggy, and I'm normally unbearable about that sort of thing.

What it actually is

Club's on a headland at Kastelholm, twenty minutes or so northeast of Mariehamn, sat on old royal hunting land — Gustav Vasa chasing elk about the place, apparently. Goes back to 1975. First nine of Slottsbanan opened in '83. And for years and years it was a good, well-liked Jan Sederholm parkland course that nobody outside the region had a reason to talk about.

Then Spogård — Philip Spogård, Danish architect — finished a rebuild in 2020. And this is the bit that gets me every time: they shut the whole course. Two years. On an island of under thirty thousand people. That is a nerve. His brief was basically one line — you should see the sea from every hole — so he pulled the holes right down to the water. And he did it. All eighteen. And on a good chunk of them you're staring straight over the bay at the castle, this medieval thing just sitting there, which sounds like brochure nonsense right up until you're on the tee and, yeah, there it is.

And it landed. Third in Finland in 2021 straight off. Number one by 2023 — best design, best condition, prettiest, the lot of it. Ladies European Tour played it in 2022. Golf Digest's got it 24th in Europe. So it's not a "lovely little island course" situation. It's a serious golf course that happens to be somewhere beautiful.

The greens are what get you

Fine, honest bit. It slipped away from me early and it did it quiet. I'd hit the fairway, feel alright over the ball, then just drop a shot round the green. Then another one, next hole. Nothing you could point at and go "there, that's where it went." Just a drip, while I figured the place out.

That first loop was me still finding my feet, which is the polite way of saying I couldn't read the greens yet. And that's the whole thing here honestly. Fairways roll and buckle, water winding round in these natural-looking hazards, but it's the greens that do you. Big false fronts. Run-offs that grab a slightly-off approach and just shove it away from the hole and now you've got a chip you really, really didn't want. Some greens go nuts with the contour, some are calm, and you can't guess which — read every one fresh or you pay. Surfaces were a funny mix too. Soft but quick, which is a weird one, and a bit chewed up in spots — pitch marks, spike marks, more than you'd want on the country's number one. Not the course's fault really. It's busy. Get to that in a sec.

Point is the early holes still bruised me even when I was driving it fine. Which tells you where the difficulty actually is. It's not off the tee. It's the forty yards round each green. And watch the bunkers — few of them were baked hard as a road the day I played, and there's nothing worse than a half-plugged lie in sand you can barely get a wedge under.

The 8th, and the ball I'm never getting back

The one hole that did get me off the tee was the 8th, and I'm still a bit sore about it, because it's a trick more than a bad swing. There's a bunker right in the middle of the fairway, short grass running down both sides of it. From the tee it looks like two fairways. And the left one looks exactly like it belongs to some other hole going the other way. It doesn't. Same hole. Both sides are yours.

Go left and you play in over some short trees to the green — looks awkward, plays honest. I went right. Because right looked cleaner, looked more like the fairway, and I ran straight off the end of it. Through the short stuff, into high hay, gone. Never found it. So take the tip that cost me a ball: left's fine, take the left, don't let yourself think it's the next hole over. Left. Trust the hole, not your eyes.

Down by the water — 9, 10, and home

The 9th's a par three right on the bay, castle sitting there in your eyeline, and if you don't fancy taking it on straight you can feed one in off a bank left of the green. Didn't do much with it, me. Doesn't matter though — you stand on that tee and it's hard to be annoyed about anything at all.

Then the 10th. And you'll have heard about the 10th before you ever get there. All that best-par-fours-in-Europe stuff, so I turned up ready to be underwhelmed, because that kind of hype normally underwhelms. Not this one. Short par four, drive over the bay, and if you've got the length and the nerve you can go at the green off the tee — reachable, if you'll hug the water down the whole right and accept the faintest little fade is wet. Or lay back, play it right, and the approach points dead at the castle across the water. I laid back and played it sensible. Called it strategy. It was probably nerve. You decide. But it's not just the view carrying the hole either — the decision's real, the risk's real, and the second you've hit it you want to walk back and try it the other way.

The par threes as a set are the real surprise. All five. There's a downhill short one ringed by three bunkers left, one right, that'll happily eat a nervy tee shot — I've read people going on about lipping out birdie putts there, aces that nearly happened.

I'm not putting a total up. Picked up on a couple, like I said, once the water had won and it stopped being about a number. And with three sixes instead of a proper front and back, the whole "out in this, home in that" way of telling a round doesn't even fit. What I'll say is how the place made me feel over eighteen had basically nothing to do with a scorecard. Scrappy start, joyful finish, best course in Finland, and I walked off wanting to go straight back out.

The practical stuff

You get in by ferry — Stockholm or Turku or Tallinn — and the crossing's genuinely part of it, not a thing to grind through first. Once you're on Åland everything's close. Club's got two full 18s: Slottsbanan, the one I've been going on about, and Kungsbanan, the King's course — trees and granite instead of water and castle.

Facilities are better than you'd brace for out here, actually. Clubhouse is properly good — modern, well looked after, somewhere you're happy to sit rather than just walk through. Locker rooms clean and done right, showers, sauna, which after a long walk in that Baltic wind is not nothing. And there's a real restaurant on site — not a sad reheated-panini counter, an actual kitchen doing good food, which matters when you've got a group that'll want lunch between loops or a proper sit-down after. Chuck in the kiosk up at the loops for a mid-round coffee or sausage and you're sorted all day without leaving the place.

One straight warning though: it's slow. Slottsbanan's the more popular of the two 18s — everyone wants the water and the castle — so it fills up and it drags. There was a marshal out working hard to keep it moving the day I played, fair play, but go in expecting leisurely, not brisk. If pace is the thing for you, Kungsbanan's the quieter ticket. If it's the views you want, you'll wait a bit, and they're worth waiting for.

Where to stay

We stayed in the northern end of the main island at Havsvidden Resort. It was 30 minutes of drive but in the wilderness and with the nice view to the setting sun. But for a quick two day trip one could most likely choose something in the Mariehamn or closer to the course.