Tawast Golf

Overview: Tawast Golf occupies a wooded 18-hole property on the northeast shore of Lake Katumajärvi in Hämeenlinna. Reijo Hillberg’s design uses returning nines, tree-lined fairways and quiet lake views to create a course that changes character without relying on dramatic earthworks. Par is 72, and the Top100 course profile lists 6,134 metres from the back tees, approximately 6,709 yards. The lake itself does not generally enter play as a hazard, but several greens sit close enough to the shoreline to make the water an important visual reference.

History: Tawast’s present 18-hole course opened in August 1989, during Finland’s late-1980s expansion of golf facilities. Hillberg designed the routing to sit in harmony with the woodland, lake and buildings of the surrounding Katinen estate. The clubhouse occupies a restored former horse stable, giving the course a tangible connection to the property’s earlier agricultural life. Tawast has since become an established championship venue while retaining the composed scale of a southern Finnish parkland course.

Did You Know? The seventeenth is Tawast’s signature hole and one of its most unusual architectural moments. A 346-metre par 4 turns around water, but an Iron Age burial mound stands in the fairway. Golf balls that finish on the mound must be lifted and played from the nearest point of relief, so a piece of local archaeology becomes part of the hole’s strategy and identity.