Sept. 11
Lausanne Golf Club
Canton of Vaud, Switzerland
By Rick Adams
The Golf Club of Lausanne, located in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland, will host a hickory golf event on Sept. 11 as one of many activities commemorating the 1921 founding.
Club manager Pierre Rindlisbacher expects members will have fun dressing up like golfers from the 1920s and 1930s and using the clubs from the earlier days of golf.
Hickory golf clubs will be provided by Iain Forrester of www.hickoryclubs.eu in the Netherlands. Each team will share a set of hickory clubs, which will allow more golfers to participate.
The event will use a “greensome” two-player format. Both players will drive on each hole, then choose the best drive, playing one ball to finish the hole with alternating shots.
This will be the 2nd hickory event at the Golf Club of Lausanne. The 2015 event was perhaps the first hickory competition held in Western Switzerland in modern times.
Also in September (17-18), the Swiss Hickory Golf Association will organize its annual Match Play championship at Golf Club Montreux in Aigle, a few kilometers from Lausanne.
A commemorative book on the history of the Lausanne club is being compiled by Pierre Ducrey and Michael Krieger. Numerous donations were made for the purchase of trees, contributing to the beautification of the course and to the protection of nature. And a bronze sculpture entitled, “Celestial houses,” creation of the artist Yves Dana, will be a new enhancement in front of the clubhouse.
In 1921, the Swiss industrialist Oscar Dolfus, who had first played golf in Montreux, asked the municipality of Lausanne to rent part of its land on the edge of the Jorat forest (the largest continuous forest in the Swiss plains), and in July the first 6 holes were inaugurated with 3 additional holes in the fall. Ten years later, the course was extended to 18 holes.
During WWII, half of the course was turned into a grain-growing field, but 9 holes were left untouched. The course was rehabilitated to 18 holes and reopened in 1947.
Additional land was acquired in 1958, and the course was redesigned by Hermann Narbel and Gregory Trippi, including 12 entirely new holes, reopened in 1962. Jeremy Pern modernized the course again in 1996.
Most of the holes go through the chestnut, birch and fir forest. Across the lake, spectacular views of the Swiss and French Alps.
In 1967, three years after a new clubhouse was built, Gene Sarazen hosted a production of Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf starring American LPGA / World Golf Hall of Famers players Sandra Haynie and the late Carol Mann.
The club also hosted the 1982 Eisenhower Trophy, the 1997 Swiss Women’s Open and the 2008 Swiss Open, among others.
1921 or 2021? They may seem the same this year at Lausanne Golf Club, Switzerland.
A view of the Lausanne Golf Club.