“This thing” was the fifth annual Arctic Open, final proof that golf mania has gone global. At this year’s open, a record 158 certifiably eccentric men and women from 10 nations journeyed to earth’s end to savor the humiliation that only arctic golf can offer. Last year, 104 entrants teed off amid a pelting rain, 25-mile-per-hour winds and a temperature of 34 degrees. This year’s field enjoyed tropical conditions: 53 degrees at tee time, later dipping into the mid-40s beneath a fine drizzle. The weather combines with the course to make for startling scores. Last year’s 18-hole record for inaccuracy was set by Englishman John Rooks, who shot a 71-over-par score of 142. This time, despite an almost as laughable showing by NEWSWEEK’S contestant, Rooks’s ignominious mark remained unsurpassed.
The first obstacle is just to get there. Foreign participants land at Keflavik, site of the NATO base. That’s followed by a 45-minute cab ride ($90) to Reykjavik, the capital. From Reykjavik, there are two choices: a five-hour bus ride around the perimeter of the rugged island, or a 45-minute flight in a twin-engine prop plane to Akureyri, Iceland’s biggest city on the north coast (population: 14,000), founded by a lOth-century Viking named Helgi the Lean. Take the plane. After heavy rains or a long drought, notes a government-sponsored guidebook, Iceland’s unpaved thoroughfares “sometimes bear little resemblance to what we usually mean by a road.”
At the Arctic Open, much the same could be said for what we usually mean by a golf course. At a cocktail party preceding the tournament, players were greeted with the comforting ground rule that “stones in the bunkers are movable obstructions.” Sadly, the same did not hold true for the giant glacial outcroppings–sometimes 15 feet high–that straddle Akureyri’s fairways. Other perils lurk in the thawing terrain after Akureyri’s minus-85-degree winters. The fairways, which can freeze more than a meter deep, become lumpy and infirm in May as the earth is heated by the volcanic warmth below and the sky above. Amy Childers, the only American pro in the tournament, found herself amid the rubble more than once. “It reminds me of a housing development,” said the 24-year-old Floridian. “The ground is broken and rocks are everywhere.” Australian marketing executive David Jensen wasn’t complaining. “At least there are no snakes in the rough,” he said. “In Australia, you never go into the gullies.”
The tourney’s appeal lies in the midnight sun. “You picture yourself on top of the globe, and everyone else is sleeping,” said Jan Engel-Andreasen, 39, a Danish lawyer playing in his first Arctic Open. “There’s a certain tranquillity that comes with playing when it’s dark in the rest of the world.” And, as if on cue, the sun poked through the slate gray clouds of the Fifth Arctic Open at precisely 11:55 on opening night, casting a glow that lasted 25 minutes. That prompted some open veterans to recall the unique trials of midnight golf on the longest day of the year. “I once went into a sand trap on the 21st of June,” said a grim-faced Mike Haith, a property developer from the north English town of Grimsby. “I didn’t get out until the 22d.”
One can, of course, take this tournament too seriously. For the bone-chilling mists, the Akureyri clubhouse lounge offers an ancient Icelandic concoction known as Black Death, a schnapps Icelanders once downed with raw shark meat. The pro shop sells a companion oddity for those sun-on-the-horizon fairways: black golf balls.“Imagine an arctic tern flying into the sun,” says black-ball inventor Johann Sigurdsson. “Then imagine how much better you could see a blackbird.” Sigurdsson is still working on one design flaw: black balls are almost impossible to find on the rocky ground. But neither black balls nor Black Death stopped hometown boy Bjorn Axelsson. He fired a 36-hole total of four-over-par 146 to win the Fifth Arctic Open. All things were relative on his home tundra. “The weather,” said Axelsson, “was excellent.”
