The World's most Extreme Golf Courses
(the world's most geographically remote and
climatically extreme, toughest and greatest golf courses)
Want to experience the ultimate golf challenge ? Take the Awesome Eight Golf Challenge, a concept invented by Robin Sieger, a motivational speakers and a self-taught extreme athlete, and his friend Neil Laughton, who has organised and led adventurous expeditions all over the World and is one of a handful of people to have climbed the "7 Summits" - the highest mountain on each continent.
To complete the Awesome Eight Golf Challenge golfers must play eight of the most remote and climatically extreme golf courses in the world within the span of a year. The only condition is that they carry their clubs, not using any caddie or cart.
The philosophy behind the challenge is to prove that it is not extraordinary people who do extraordinary things, but
ordinary people who choose to prove the sceptics wrong. All is needed is a powerful 'can do' approach.
The Awesome eight includes the following extreme golf courses:
The world's Coldest Golf course: North Star, Alaska
North Star may be the only golf course that includes an animal checklist on its scorecard. They even have a local rule stating that "When a raven or fox steals a golf ball, a replacement may be dropped without penalty at the scene of the crime." The course is underlain by permafrost, creating an ever changing pattern of dips, swales, and mounds reminiscent of the great courses of Scotland.
The world's Hottest Golf Course: Alice Springs, Australia
Robin Sieger at Furnace Creek,
The world's lowest golf course
(214 feet below sea level)
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The World's Highest Golf course: La Paz, Bolivia
Prepare for a sauna hot golf round at Alice Springs Golf Club, one of the top ten desert courses in the world. The course is set in the foothills of the majestic MacDonnell Ranges. Sieger and Laughton remember the extremely friendly welcome as being "not far of the type returning astronauts are used too."
Read more about Alice Springs and other of the world's toughest golf courses on our World's hardest golf courses page.
The World's Lowest Golf course: Furnace Creek, California
Furnace Creek Golf course has its first tee 214 feet (65m) below sea level.
How do you determine which is the highest golf course in the world ?
According to record books Tuctu, in Peru is the highest golf course culminating at 14,400 feet (4,401), but as the course is not in playing shape, Sieger settled on La Paz Golf Club, in Bolivia. Read more about La Paz Golf Club on our World's hardest golf courses page.
Photos courtesy of Robin Sieger.
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The world's Most Northerly golf course: North Cape, Norway
The world's coldest golf course
North Star Golf Club, Fairbanks Alaska, -26˚C
Photo courtesy of Robin Sieger
The world's highestt golf course
La Paz, Bolivia, 10650 feet (3,246m)
Extreme Golf:
The World's Most Unusual, Fantastic And Bizarre Courses
by Duncan Lennard
More information:
Natural Born Winners :
How to Achieve Happiness and Personal Fulfilment
(Paperback)
by Robin Sieger,
Written by the founder of the Awesome Eight Golf Challenge
this applicable self-development book introdues you to the 'can do' approach
More information:
With its 6-hole course, two par-4s and four par 3s, the North Cape Golf Club lacks the demands of a challenging course. However, the club offers the unique experience to play golf in the land of the midnight sun, i.e. 24 hours a day, from mid-May to the end of August. As Artic Circle Norwegians have no sense of territory, the club also has a local rule: even if the ball lands into one of
Fifty Places to Play Golf Before You Die :
Golf Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations
(Hardcover)
by Chris Santella
More information:
The World's Toughest Golf Course: Ko'olau, Hawaii
At 55 degrees latitude, close to Cape Horn, a strong cold wind from the Antarctic regularly scours the Ushuaia Golf Club in the Tierra del Fuego National Park, Argentina.
The world's Most Southerly: Ushuaia, Argentina
the unfenced gardens that border the course, you are allowed to pitch it back onto the course.
Sieger and Laughton at
the Most Southern, Ushuaia GC, Argentina
The Awesome Eight participants are probably the only ones to ever have walked the Ko'olau, as buggies are compulsory on this course, recognized as one of the toughest in the world !
To successfully complete the challenge, golfers must present photographic proof with signed cards by local officials. Golfers who succeed, will be issued a certificate, granting them membership to the Awesome Eight Golf Society, the most elite yet least exclusive club in the world, as its counts only two members in its four years of existence. Or, to put it differently, no one else has since succeeded in completing the challenge. In February 2006 the record still stood at 364 days for all eight courses.
And finally, of course, the world's Greatest and Oldest of all golf courses: St Andrews, Old Course, Scotland.
