The grass is greener on the Eastern side. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, golf and property ownership, both detested by the Communists, are prospering in Eastern Europe.
It’s official: ‘Golf is a bourgeois sport’. So says Hugo Chavez, the rabidly left-wing President of Venezuela.
Before the fall of Communism in 1989, regimes across Eastern Europe regarded the game as the epitome of Western capitalist decadence. American Presidents and James Bond played golf. Comrade Khrushchev did not.
Property ownership was communal rather than private. Party apparatchiks had dachas for weekend relaxation, but the masses could only dream of owning a rural retreat. The irony is that, over the intervening 20 years, the unholy alliance of golf and fairway-side development has led the property counter-revolution.
Beroun is 15 minutes from the centre of Prague. A new course and development that opened there this summer wouldn’t look out of place in Portugal or Florida. Funded by South Korean money – they wanted somewhere for their executives working at the nearby steel plant to play – it’s the property face of a brave new Eastern European world.
Thirty years ago, it would have been impossible. ‘The Czech secret police thought we were giving away state secrets on the greens,’ says Amara Zemplinerova, one-time national champion. ‘In 1980, there were only 500 Czech players, so we were more likely to meet foreign diplomats on the country’s four badly maintained courses than each other.
‘The regime’s solution to deter the game they detested would have made my countryman, Kafka, proud,’ she remembers. ‘It was still legal to play, but it was impossible to buy clubs, shoes or, crucially, golf balls. You can see why we fraternised with foreigners.’
The country now has 70,000 players and over 50 courses, including Beroun, where there are currently 27 apartments for sale from £108,000, 23 townhouses from £370,00, and three large villas costing over £480,000.
Construction quality in Eastern Europe can be mixed, as buyers in Bulgaria and Romania have discovered. At Beroun, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the design, building spec, under-floor heating, kitchens and bathrooms are all German, so the standard is high.
In the USSR itself, golf was not only forbidden, but almost unheard of. Stalin annexed Estonia in 1940. Fifty years later, the Baltic state gained its independence from Soviet Russia, and Mait Schmidt went into business for himself in his native Tallinn and took up the game. His construction company flourished as his golf handicap improved.
Playing for his country, he travelled the world and saw how golf and property schemes provided a small but perfect mechanism for the regeneration of developing economies. Estonia joined the EU and Schmidt opened his Estonian Golf and Country Club in the same year, 2004. It’s already attracting international tournaments, and the houses are selling well.
‘The course cost about £5 million, which we’re funding from the sale of property,’ says Schmidt. He realised that an emerging middle-class and rich foreign tourists would want to play golf. ‘Tallinn businessmen now have the time and money to enjoy a game, just like in the UK or Germany. We also have many Tallinn-based British members.’
The development runs through virgin forest right on the Baltic Sea coast. Houses, built at a discreet distance from the fairways, are light, minimalist and stylish. Thirty-four of the 120 available plots have so far been built on, with three-bedroom detached houses going for £280,000 and four-bedroom ones for £374,000. Building plots cost from £84,000.
Sixty-five-year-old John Doherty started doing business in Estonia 10 years ago. ‘I was sourcing timber there to start with, but once the economy started taking off, with a new airport, new motorways and five-star hotels, I started investing in bars as well.’
Two years ago, he bought a three-bedroom detached house at the EGCC, with uninterrupted sea views, for about £420,000, ‘with all the extras. It’s a magical spot – I spend about one week a month there.’ A widower, John finds his golf-mad sons love the place, and his own game is improving.
On the same latitude as the Shetland Islands, Tallinn has long summer days and long winter nights. Play is only guaranteed six month a year, but the beauty of the natural environment is hard to beat. ‘I want to keep it simple and natural,’ says Schmidt. ‘As well as the golf, we have 100 species of birds here, good fishing, and Nordic skiing in the winter.’
The buildings of the beautiful Polish city of Krakow escaped the Second World War relatively unscathed. Its people suffered terribly. After 50 years of Fascism and Communism, in 1989, the city began to breathe again.
Knowing a growing Polish professional class wanted somewhere to flaunt their new-found wealth and leisure time, and that returning ex-pat Poles might want a flash pad back in their old homeland, an entrepreneurial Polish businessman, Zibi Lis, started work on the Krakow Valley Golf and Country Club 10 years ago.
Thanks to top US designer Ronald Fream, the one-time communist collective farm is now the best course in the country. ‘Although we only spent $3 million,’ says project manager Kevin Ramsay, ‘building a stand-alone course doesn’t pay the bills. It’s the new property that funds the whole project.’
Portuguese developer Maexpa has built 161 apartments on the course, priced from £138,000 for a one-bedroom unit up to £182,000 for the two-bedroom models. The first phase is due to finish this month. An indoor horse-riding school, shooting range and ski slope are also right on site, making Valley Golf something of a sporting hub.
When I was there, the Polish equivalent of the SAS were getting in some rifle practice – either disturbing or reassuring depending on your historical perspective.
Poles who have made money in the West were some of the very first buyers at the Krakow Valley Golf Village. As they play golf, they talk business. Back in Red Square, Lenin must be spinning in his Mausoleum.
Contacts:
Beroun: www.golfberoun.cz T: +420 602 312 210
EGCC: www.egcc.ee T: +372 6 025 296
Krakow Valley: www.valleygolfvillage.com T: +48 12346 2897