A German solution to a German problem

Many of us part-time golfers will have given our clubs the first dusting down of the year during the holiday weekend. May is the time of year when it feels like you should be taking advantage of the stretch in the evenings and engaging in some sort of evening outdoor exertion. What better time to start your golf season? If you are in the right country that is. Even in our cluttered capital you can still manage to find a spare patch of grass to whack a few balls on, and the beach is always a good location where the infrequent golfer can tune up the clubs. Golf is still reasonably accessible to whoever is keen to play in this country.

Not so in Germany. Golf is very much a preserve of the upper crust of society, and it looks like it will remain so for quite some time. Ask someone on the street who won the Masters and the likely reply would be: "Is that wrestling or table tennis?"

Even though Germany has produced a double major winner in Bernhard Langer, and three well-ranked players in Thomas Goegle, Sven Struver and Alex Cejka, it does not feature as a prominent sport in a very sports-conscious country.

The reason, I believe, is the prohibitive system that the Deutche Golf Verbant (DGV), the controlling amateur body, have set up for amateurs to start playing the game. I counted only one German professional in the 180 entrants to the final stage of the European qualifying school last year, yet Germany staged four tournaments on the European Tour last year, one seniors event and one challenge event.

It's hard to see where all this interest is coming from. When the old pros like Langer fade away, where are his replacements? When there are none, does that mean that the main tour events slide into obscurity as well? The German Open has already departed from the 2000 schedule. I took a trip to the Schoenbuch golf club south of Stuttgart in Baden Wuerttemberg. It was midweek and there were plenty of people about. There is an excellent range there with adjoining chipping green and putting green. There are nine holes for the public and 18 for the members.

To become a member you must buy a share of the club for DM25,000 (£10,000), then hand over DM4,000 (£1,600) to the club, never to be seen again, and also pay DM2,200 (£850) as a yearly subscription. That, I'm sure you would agree, is a hefty outlay for a pleasant course but far from a world beater, which you can play only 10 months of the year, weather permitting. This is an average course in Germany. The practice facilities are open to all, provided you pay your DM20 (£8) "green fee". Then you pay £3.50 for a bucket of balls.

But that is as far as you will get here unless you have got your Platzreife or Platzerlaubnis. The Germans have introduced a sort of driver's licence for golfers. If you haven't passed this rather stringent test then you are destined to a life on the range. No licence, no golf course.

So how do you go about getting a Platzerlaubnis? If you went to Schoenbuch and reserved a time with an overstretched Australian professional called Jon Evans, you would be on your way to obtaining the precious players licence. Jon tells newcomers that after about 16 lessons, coupled with some serious practice sessions, then you should be close to passing your golf test.

That's if you can get a time with Jon. He, along with three other coaches, could teach well into the night if there were floodlights on the range. There is a definite interest in the game, but from whom?

Judging by the clientele at Schoenbuch, where there was an abundance of middle-aged women whiling away the afternoon on the range until their husbands got home from their board meetings, golfers here tend to be of the mature variety. Perhaps the DGV have a master plan to take the women's seniors tour by storm in the coming years with their initiation system. It seems like they are not concerned with getting their golfers on the main tours.

The test is, of course, a good way to weed out the complete hackers from already packed German courses. But the fundamental flaw with an exam system for golf is that it suits people who are good at passing exams, but it does little to enlighten the novices about the golf swing.

When Jon feels that his pupils are ready to get around each hole in an average of three over (this amounts to a handicap of 54), he takes them on to the course for the final interrogation. If they succeed then they are granted the Platzreife.

There appears to be an air of complacency in German golf. If a reasonable player gets down to a handicap of four or five they seem happy at that. There is no incentive or local competition to encourage a higher standard. Tino Schuster is Germany's great golfing hope: winner of the Lytham trophy last year and playing off plus three, he is their best amateur golfer. Tino is not exactly from a bluecollar background.

How long is Germany going to wait for another privileged talent to materialise? Surely it's not the most efficient system to find prospective talent. At £33 for an hour with Jon Evans, and possibly 20 hours required to reach the Platzreife, standard Hans Arbeiter (Joe Worker) is likely to give golf a wide berth.