The World Ice Golf Tournament is a 36 hole-stroke competition played over two days. The day before the Championship the players also compete in a 'Ryder Cup' style tournament, called The Niemann Cup, as a tribute to Arne Niemann. It is a great way for participants to get used to the freezing conditions, playing on ice and the layout of the course before taking part in the World Championship tournament.

Genuine ice golf between icebergs

With it´s dry high arctic and stable climate, icebergs, pure environment north of the Polar Circle, only a few millimeter of snowfall during the winter Uummannaq, Greenland offers the best, most extreme and spectacular ice golf course on earth.

Nature is the architect of the golf course

The real architect of the golf course every year is the ocean, which interacts with the weather and the formation of icebergs in January and February to create an external framework for the course.

The golf course itself is laid out in March on the fjord ice, close to the town a week prior to the actual championship. Its shape is determined largely by the positions of icebergs in the fjord.

The golf course is a nine holes par 35 or 36 and consist ideally of 5 par 4’s, 2 par 3’s and 2 par 5’s. The distance is about 5-7% shorter than a normal average golf course (5.400 – 5.800 meter for 18 holes).

Be prepared for the fact that the foundation is variable and can be very different from hole to hole. On one side of an iceberg there can be a lot more snow than on the other, and the ice is very different to that on a European ice rink. Over the very hard ice surface lies a layer of approx. 1-2 cm frozen "powder", which makes the surface itself rough and uneven.

The "green" is white and the ball is red, but apart from that ice golf is very similar to traditional golf, although it is necessary to adjust the course itself and the rules of the game to suit the unusual conditions that prevail on the ice. After a few strokes, however, the players very quickly get a feel for the special conditions.

Records cannot be beaten hole-by-hole, day-by-day or even event-by-event as the course is constantly altering as movements in the pack-ice allow new jutting outcrops of ice to emerge into the course.

World Ice Golf has been around since the 17th century as evidenced by a painting by the Dutch painter Aert van der Neer (1603-1677) showing players with a club in their hands attempting to get a ball into a hole in the ice covering a frozen canal in Holland. At that time the game was called "kolven".

A Brief Retrospect

The World Ice Golf Championship was the brainchild of Mr. Arne Neimann, a local resident and hotel proprietor on a small island called Uummannaq, off Greenland's North West coast. In 1997 Mr. Neimann challenged architect Rolf-Henning Jensen to design Greenland's first golf course, which proved remarkably easy to do. With support of the local community, Uummannaq Municipality and Greenland Tourism the World Ice Golf Committee was set-up to establish the ice golf championship. The World Ice Golf Championship in Uummannaq has become a genuine and inimitable international golfing event.