Branden Wilburn. PHOTO - COURTESY OF GOLF DESIGN STUDIOS

The sport of snobs or everyone's game? As golfing culture begins to put down roots in Slovakia, those with a hand in the sport will decide what it will look like. One of those people is Branden Wilburn, a partner at the international golf course and landscape architecture firm Golf Design Studio with strong feelings about the game and its future in Slovakia. Excitement fills his voice when he talks about designing, building, and then playing a course: "How many people get to design a game?" Here in Slovakia he has the chance to help design the whole industry.

Raised in Florida, a golfing state of the US where, he says, everybody has a course, Wilburn moved to Bratislava after he married a Slovak woman. "It's an emerging market and it's exciting to see that. It's exciting to see the people that are just learning to pick it up and really have a love for the game," he said.

Because golf is still small here, he says, education must be the main focus of projects. Practice facilities and smaller courses nurture a growing golfing community because they are cheap - and therefore accessible - and allow fresh golfers to practice their swings. Incorporating such teaching centres also creates future clients: "You're aiding the golfing public and you're developing future clients for your projects."

The country's golfing history extends back to the first course in Tatranská Lomnica in 1908. But since then developments have come slowly, and in 1991 there were no courses to be found. Slovakia now has five, one of which has 18 holes, and the rest have 9. Some new spots are also in the making, for example a 27-hole project in the High Tatras. In addition, about a dozen clubs are scattered around the country, some of which are connected with a course, driving range, or practice facility. Augustín Hauskrecht, general secretary of the Slovak Golf Union, which had 2,116 members last year, and the emerging Slovak Golf Association, agrees that the primary thing Slovakia needs is more courses. "The system of many clubs without technical facilities satisfied the time when golf needed a quantity of members. Now has come a time when a quantity of courses and training grounds also needs to be obtained," he said. "There is much to be done here," Wilburn agreed. "There are a few golf courses around and a few driving ranges. But... it is expensive. These golf courses around here are not that cheap, and they don't offer that much for the money."

An 18-hole game at Bernolákovo is listed at Sk750 or Sk1,100 depending on the day of the week, while a bucket of balls at a practice course would cost about Sk150. "If you do something like these smaller facilities for new players you can get more local golfers involved. Eventually they'll start playing on the practice holes that you have and then go to the nine and 18-hole courses... If you do one or two of these just outside of Bratislava, you've got a huge population that you can start getting involved," Wilburn said. Unfortunately, he says, big courses like 18-hole facilities are what most developers seem to have in mind. "It's tricky because a lot of developing golf communities are starting to fall into the ways of the older golf, where it's more high society, and very expensive, and an elite club - and that's not what golf really is. Golf is for everybody."

By Eric Smillie, The Slovak Spectator