Golf as a team sport: fairytale ending after legal prelude

Golf is considered to be an individual sport par excellence. Everyone plays their own game, their own result. The rare exceptions are the continental duels between the best professionals from Europe against those from the USA - the Ryder Cup for men and the Solheim Cup for women, which the Europeans won this weekend (with Esther Henseleit from Hamburg) 15:13. Or the Final Four, the German team final after five Bundesliga match days.

For the first time, Magenta TV broadcast live from the Munich-Riedhof golf course. So let's take a look! It should be somewhat shocking. The team of reporters talks as if excited: “… unbelievable… fabulous… unbelievable… the spearhead of amateur sport!” And six times the reference to a “Cinderella story” (more on that later). Overlays are missing or incorrect. No overview. Added to this is ignorance (“I don’t know that at all… I never thought about it.”) and grotesque sugarcoating: “These masses of people…” From the drone camera, barely 100 can be seen in the wide area.

During the hour-long broadcast, instead of balls, legal statements flew back and forth. The preliminary injunction of the Wiesbaden Regional Court in the Frankfurt Golf Club case against the German Golf Association DGV was commented on. The judge had conceded the results of the St. Leon-Rot Golf Club. Disqualification. Reason: A player who is not eligible to start. He had played on the professional tour at the beginning of the year and had re-amateurization in May. According to the DGV statutes, this should have happened on January 1st. The association still allowed him.

Now GC Frankfurt moved up. Its president Gabriele Sachse: "Rules are rules. Our umbrella association is now experiencing this painfully. Here, their own rules were interpreted in the style of a landlord." She called for “personal consequences”, but without addressees. DGV President Claus Kobold? He sheepishly admitted that they wanted to “learn lessons” from the verdict.

St. Leon-Rot near Heidelberg, founded and financed with Dietmar Hopp's SAP millions, is a noble golf course, chic but not fancy, with spectacular training facilities that, according to the website, "enable many young people, regardless of their social opportunities, to get started in this fascinating sport". A club that has won the league title several times since 2013, most recently in 2023 and 2024 for men and five times for women. But now he was cheating, together with the association.

Berlin-Wannsee won the women's final against Hamburger GC. Secret of success? The Magenta reporter wanted to know this very investigatively: “That we all love each other very much,” revealed player Camille Peltier. In the morning she managed a hole in one from 142 meters. Magenta promised to show this later, but then failed to do so.

The Franconian golf club Habsberg actually managed the Cinderella story for men. He has been promoted a whopping six times in the last seven years and, as a newcomer to the Bundesliga, won the final against Frankfurt 7:5. Reasons? “Pure willpower,” said one, “we are all cut from the same cloth.” Or: “We are like a family.” The head of the family, so to speak, is “our sponsor Alex”. Alexander Bringmann, managing director of the neighborhood craft supply company Folia, was apparently able to build the squad with a lot of money.

The course in Habsberg played a major role in German golf back in 2006. Here Martin Kaymer, later a two-time major winner, achieved a round of 59 in June 2006. That was 13 strokes under par, a world record in professional tournaments at the time (today: 57). The club is now champions. Their fairytale-free fate: they can no longer move up.