24 Hours Playing Golf in the Arctic Circle

24 Hours Playing Golf in the Arctic Circle

Hi, I’m Eric and this is Golf Research. For this episode, we’ve traveled to Greenland. It’s one small step for golf and one giant leap for golf kind. So, how did I end up on an iceberg with a seven iron in my hand? Like any good story, it began with a map. I’ve spent my adult life searching the corners of the earth for the strangest, the wildest, the most alien golf experiences around. I’ve been to 40 countries, including Nepal, Vietnam, and India, but nine holes have been just out of reach for me. That’s because they’re in Greenland. I saw the course in an old golf book and always wondered, who plays this course? Is there even grass? Could it even be real? Does it still exist? We are on the edge of the earth. Let’s back up. Here’s everything I know about Greenland. It’s the biggest island in the world. It’s in North America, but you can only get there from Europe. And yes, there’s the old cliche that Greenland is mostly ice and Iceland is mostly green. So when my friend Teemo invited us to visit the Echo headquarters in Denmark, I said, “Of course, as long as we can make one slight detour.” Clearly, this is something that actually is belonging to the nature and can be used in the different conditions. We laid over in Kangangerusk, a former US air base turned commercial airport. Then we carried on across a blinding desert of ice to the capital of Nuke, a city village of half the population of Greenland, that’s 20,000 people, carved into the coastline. That’s where our story [Music] begins. What are you expecting to find on this journey, Temo? The holy grail of golf. Greenland’s short summer is coming to an end, but the weather here is far from predictable. All right, so we’re headed for our first taste of golf here on Greenland. Going to go to the new golf club where we’re going to meet our main contact on the island, guy named Simon. I can I can kind Wow, rocks are the hazard. Got it. From the road, the golf course looks like one giant boulder. Not a tree in sight. It’s 39°. The wind is blowing 39 miles an hour and we’ve been on planes for two days. But that pales in comparison to how long I’ve been waiting to see these nine holes. Check it out, dude. This is sick. Wow. Oh, this is so crazy. Look at this. Wow. That is a crazy golf hole. We tend to say that golf up here isn’t like real golf. Some of it it’s similar to golf elsewhere and other is just getting out in the nature and enjoying weather. Sometimes snow. Welcome to Nuke Golf Club. This is the best golf course in Greenland. Is that fair to say? It is definitely. You have to get used to the the narrow fairways and the rocks. That’s why we have a club we only use for hitting the the golf ball in in the rocks. It It is something I never seen elsewhere in the world. My fingers are frozen. Nice ball. Wow, Simon. Great swing. I think I’m going to go an eight iron cuz I’m a little cold, you know. We’ll see what happens here. My first shot barely reaches the fairway. We play as often we can outside when the snow has is here. We play in our trackman all year. Like that’s gonna get a great kick on the green almost. I can see the rocks are placed here strategically. Yeah. Yeah. Every rock seems to hit the ball close. Yeah. Wow. This is great. It’s really like we’re going for a hike. This is more of a hike than any golf experience I’ve ever been on. Walking through puddles. Yeah. this place where the golf cup is right now that was just uh way out there like you went out here to do camping or if you were going on a hike this would be a place to go. I’ve played in all types of conditions but the wind and nuke seems to come from every direction at once. We are on the edge of the earth. You normally have someone stand up there to try to find the ball. Yeah. Yeah. So we can see where the ball comes. Yeah. Yeah. Where did that one go? Uh on the between the rocks. Between the rocks. I make two bogeies and then par the third. Simon tells me that the grass is ironically from Iceland. Come on, Bessie. Wow, that was really good shot, man. This is the most extreme round of golf I’ve ever played in my life. Bar none. Far enough. Let me explain something to calculate how cold I feel. It’s not 39° with windchill. This is a massive island without a tree to be seen. The only thing growing here are rocks. I’m excited to see how the holes go together. We’re doing an abbreviated routing. Due to the wind and the temperature, we decide to come back tomorrow in fairer weather. The finishing stretch will have to wait. Nuk’s airport is only a 100 yards from the golf course and one of the club’s members, Milan, is trying to get more countries to fly here, primarily the United States. How do you attract an airline to fly to Greenland? That’s fascinating. Well, the tourism in Greenland is a booming industry and it’s been quite hard to get to Greenland. Yeah. You can’t fly here from America. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, so now we’re like thinking, okay, this is a good opportunity for the airlines as well as two operators and this is only like a 3-hour flight from New York. 3hour flight from New York that I don’t see you would have so many people coming here because it’s so special. Hopefully, they will. Yeah, that’s great. Leaving the golf course, we realize that we haven’t eaten all day. Nuke’s two restaurants are closed, but Simon and his wife Nvie come to the rescue. We arranged to shower up and head to their home, a beautiful townhouse overlooking the ocean. The whole house smells like food, and I can’t wait to dig in. You shouldn’t force yourself to eat stuff if you don’t want it, cuz there is definitely people here who want it, cuz it’s a really it’s traditional food and it’s like our soul food. Vivi, a member of New Golf Club, cuts into the dried whale with an ulu, a traditional curved blade designed for skinning and slicing. Yeah. And it’s only It’s very beautiful. It’s naw whale. You just ate a naw whale. What’s a naw whale? Tusk. Tusk with the the whale tusk. Is that this? Yes. Yes. You don’t like you have it tattooed and you don’t know the name of it. Correct. I came here to figure out many things. That’s a really good That’s a really good Yeah. Okay. Now, what’s this? This is the dried whale feed. Seal the dried seal seal jerky. That’s the whale. Let us Yeah, that’s the whale and that’s the seal. I’m so grateful that you guys did this for us. Thank you. This is uh far beyond our expectations. This is cool. As the night draws on, the gang of new friends trade stories. Vzna’s first hole in one. Teemo’s drive on four. Then at someone’s behest, Simon goes to an old cabinet and pulls out trophy after trophy. We’re We’re staying in the presence of an accomplished golfer here. This is How many of these are related to Nuke? All of All of them. So I’m a I’m a ninetime outdoor champion. Outdoor champion. Yeah. And this is a hole in one ball. And this is the hole in one ball. I made a hole in one on our hole number three. That’s a good hole, by the way. Which which is a good hole? Is that where you got your home? Yeah. Golf and food are universal languages, no matter how strange and unfamiliar they first appear. We leave the evening with full stomachs and high [Music] spirits. In the morning, we set off to learn more about this peculiar place. My first question, why are all the houses so colorful? The rules are the colors of the houses should be the classic colors of green, blue and red, yellow. So they refer to the old buildings. The red buildings were the commercial buildings and the yellow were the hospitals and the blue ones were municipality and the green one was the police and all that. Is that still true today or Yeah, actually it is. There’s still so much left to learn. For example, like what is the country called in the native tongue? In Greenlandic, it’s galashad, land of Greenlanders. This is Dieta, the historian at Greenland’s National Museum. She’s agreed to bring us up to speed. Greenland is a huge, huge country. We are around 56,000 people living here all along the coast. To imagine how big Greenland is, you have to think that no cities are connected by road. On the largest island in the world, you travel by boat, plane, or not at all. These are toys. Yeah. So, you get to know the animals that’s around you. There was education for the children. Yeah, we we think so. Uh, it makes sense that it is. Da walks us through the archive. There are shoes made of seal skin and an ancient anorak that could still keep you warm and dry. And at the back of the museum, there’s a small room with a haunting story. They are from the late 15th century. Wow. So they have given us a a lot of knowledge about how people lived before colonization. It’s a reminder people have made this unforgiving island a home for far longer than we can imagine. Because of the climate, the dry cold climate, they were during these 500 years before they were found freezedried. So that’s why we can see their nails, the hair, skin, teeth. I’ve never seen anything like this. No, they are quite extraordinary. You can also get the feeling of being a bit trapped in the cities. You have to use the nature. Yeah, you have to sail into the fjords or climb uh some of the beautiful mountains we have here. You have to use the nature to feel like getting out of the city. It’s midday and without the wind, the marina is quiet. A founding member of New Golf Club has invited us for a boat ride. We should take a little uh Yeah, let’s do it. Right. Let’s go for a ride. This is Alrech Davgard, elder, musician, and one of Greenland’s first golfers. How many times have you played the golf course? This? Yeah. Since uh 2002. Many times. It’s a beautiful golf course. Yeah. For me, it’s the best. It feels like Greenland makes sense on the water. We We don’t have roads, so we have water. What to you is the most interesting part of Greenland? The most interesting? Yeah. It’s uh the nature and uh we don’t have pollution here up here. Yeah. So uh when we come from Denmark and come to the airport grill and we can feel the fresh air. Yeah. Yes, it’s very clean. Yeah. How would you describe this golf course to someone who hasn’t seen it? It depends on weather. Yeah. If it’s from north it’s difficult and if from south it’s very difficult to play because it’s rainy and stormy sometimes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So, it’s either difficult or very difficult. Greenland is a melting pot. It’s taking time for locals to embrace the sport. More Greenlanders should play. Yeah. But they it seems to not to be so interested. It’s not expensive. I think we had to rebrand it as that is a game for everybody. I really wish more young ones especially played more golf. It’s super easy to meet people out here even by yourself. You always find someone to play with because we share this uh golf passion. We become friends. When I first told Teemo about this golf course in Greenland, we were designing a shoe together. It happened naturally, but we realized the project had to be about this place, the ultimate adventure. So, we came up with this idea to make these shoes, which I have one pair which we can leave here with you guys. The shoe here has a very special Wow. coordinates on the uh on the edge here. The latitude and longitude is actually this exact spot where we’re standing. Wow, that’s great. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, and these are great cuz you know, you won’t get a sprained ankle on the rocks. And I can’t imagine a better environment for this shoe to be inspired by. And I love the edging. Yeah. And that’s kind of like the mountains. The mountains. Exactly. Yeah. We got inspired by the nature of Greenland and is it’s waterproof. Very well. Yes. Please. Thank you so much. That is very great. We love it. Best course in Greenland. Yeah. Exactly. It’s rare I get to bring something to a golf course. So often I’m being given something. And while that’s also true here, it makes me so proud to see our shoe on the wall of Nuke Golf [Music] Club. We have a tea time at sunset, but we have one more mission before that. To swing a golf club on an iceberg. The boat ride into the fjords takes more than 2 hours. [Music] Did we get naked in this thing [Music] or I won’t lie, staring at the water, I am nervous. There’s like a full on like So that’s so that stripe must have been a season or like a couple years or something or like a a storm. Um, no. I think it’s just the cracks. Eric, you ready? All right, Mark. and action. Hi, I’m Eric and this is Golf Research. These adventures are my favorite things to do in the world. In fact, last week we went to Ireland with 24 players, random golf club members who signed up. We played five courses in 5 days. Had a blast. The thinking is if you like this video, you would probably like to come on a random golf club trip or even a random golf club event in your local town. We host a mad scramble. It is the most fun you can have on a golf course. So, head over to randomgolfclub.com and check out what we’re doing to build membership for you. I’m ready to play the course one last time. And the golf gods heard our prayers. The weather is [ __ ] perfect. All right, so we’re going to listen to Alre’s. This was the number one track in Greenland in 2013. It’s a vibe. [Music] Nuke feels like someone took all the pieces of a golf course from somewhere else, gathered them in a bag, and then when they arrived in Greenland, the bag breaks. It’s a cubist golf course. If you were to take away the hole signs, you’d never be able to put it back together again. If I’m being honest, sometimes a golf course transcends the ability to be described. I can only tell you how surreal or incredible or fantastic a place is so many times. So in this case, we asked Alrech to tell us about the golf course in his native tongue. for to me. Nuke Golf Club will forever be the collection of people I met here. It’ll be freezing my fingers off. It’ll be hitting rock clubs off of rocks. It’ll be the northern lights over the practice putting green on the biggest island in the world. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] I assume you’re watching this video because you love golf and you love adventures. Same. Random Golf Club is a lot more than a YouTube channel. We host three types of events. We do international golf trips for a week. We just had our first one in Ireland. It was insane. We also host daylong events that are like 27 holes with a scramble, stroke play, best baseball, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Super fun. Those are called classics. And we also host the iconic Mad Scramble, which is basically the most fun you can have on a golf course. 100 players. We birdie every hole that we don’t eagle. It’s like a moving cocktail party with a subtle purpose. So head over to randomgolf.com, but do that after you like and subscribe to this video, folks. RGC for life. Much love. Eric out. I do kind of want to take off the life vest, which is probably the craziest part. [Music]

In today’s episode, we travel to one of the most remote golf destinations on Earth—Nuuk, Greenland. We visit Nuuk Golf Club, a course I’ve dreamed of playing for years, but reaching it is no easy journey.

Nuuk Golf Club is the northernmost grass golf course in the world. It’s a rugged 9-hole layout with scattered fairways, rocky terrain, and mostly blind shots.

We set out to connect with Greenland’s tight-knit golf community, explore the Greenlandic culture, and uncover how this remarkable course came to exist—and thrive—in such an unlikely place.

Huge thanks to ECCO Golf. Check our very first golf shoe collaboration, the RGC x ECCO Golf Biom H5: https://randomgolfclub.com/pages/ecco-golf

🙎‍♂️ Erik Anders Lang
📝 JoJo Phillips
🎥 Keffer Rhodes
✂️ Elliot Fryer

Special Thanks:
Timo Vollrath
Michael Waack
Thomas Maymann
Simon Westman
Vivi Petersen
All of the Members of Nuuk Golf Club
Nuuk Water Taxi
Greenland National History Museum and Archives
Qarsoq (Albrecht Damgaard from the episode) for the outro song. It was one of Greenlands most popular songs in the 70’s.