Cudze chwalicie, swego nie znacie – polskie Postołowo w światowej czołówce golfa

YOU PRAISE SOMEONE ELSE’S, YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR OWN – POLISH POSTOŁOWO IN THE WORLD TOP GOLF

The words „You praise others, you don’t know your own, you don’t know what you own” were written by Stanisław Jachowicz – a Polish fairy-tale writer, poet and pedagogue who lived at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. He placed them in the poem „The Village”, reminding us that too often we admire what is foreign, forgetting about the values that we have right next to us.

Today, these words take on a special meaning – especially in the context of the latest success of Polish golf.

POSTOŁOWO GOLF CLUB – THE SECOND MOST DEMANDING GOLF COURSE IN THE WORLD

We are pleased and proud to announce that Gdańsk Golf & Country Club – Postołowo has been ranked second in the world in terms of difficulty among „general-public” courses.

The ranking was compiled based on the analysis of a huge database of thousands of golf courses from all over the world. It includes the so-called Slope Rating – a factor determining the degree of difficulty of the golf course for both professionals and amateurs.

This award is a great success not only for Mr. William Siwek – the owner and investor, but also for the Polish golf community. Since the beginning of the 90s, Mr. Siwek has been committed to developing and improving Postołowo, making it a recognizable place on the map of world golf.

The polishgolf.pl portal, which has been cooperating with Postołowo from the very beginning, organizes numerous tournaments and initiatives promoting golf in Poland. For 27 years, Postołowo has been at the forefront of domestic golf courses in the PGA Polish Golf Awards plebiscite.

It is worth noting that it was Postołowo that was the first in Poland to build a FootGolf course, combining elements of football and golf – an attraction that quickly gained popularity among players and tourists.

Interview with William Siwek, owner of Postołowo Golf Club

In connection with the international success of the course, we conducted an interview with Mr. William Siwek – a man who has been passionately building the brand of Polish golf for over three decades.

In connection with the international success of the course, we conducted an interview with Mr. William Siwek – a man who has been passionately building the brand of Polish golf for over three decades.

Mr. William, congratulations on this unique award! This is a huge success that puts Poland on the world map of golf. What emotions accompanied you after receiving this information?

I think similar to those experienced by Nobel Prize winners, who are focused on their work and always surprised that the outside world has noticed the effects of their work.

We do our own thing, and later it turns out that it made sense and provided some added value. Nice.

What was the evaluation process like in the ranking? Did participation in the classification involve fees or formal course registration?

I don’t know exactly, no one asked us anything. They had their own methods. Recently, many American players have been coming to us, perhaps they had a „scout”. This news came to us unexpectedly. At the beginning of September, strange things began to happen with our computer system, which slowed down to a level that made it impossible to work normally. We went to Google Analytics and it turned out that our server is bombarded with entries to the English-speaking part of www.postolowo.com from the USA, UK, Japan and several other countries – with a special focus on HOLES, i.e. course guide. There were several hundred entries a day from major US cities, and 480 from New York alone. The cat came out of the bag when Mikołaj, looking for the reason, came across a hyperlink BigTees connected to our website, placed under the photo of Postołowo in their ranking report.

Ranking companies demanding fees are unreliable to us, and we don’t even talk to them. Their rankings are distorted and therefore unbelievable, because it is enough for one Mickey-Mouse golf course to appear on them and no one believes in such a ranking. There were a few attempts, they have got to earn money some way. Coming back to our cases, I think that it was the computers that went through several thousand golf courses according to the set criteria and presented the results.

What were the main criteria that determined the position of Postołowo in such a high place?

We haven’t had any contact with BigTees Golf World so far, but from what they write in the article, they rated primarily the Slope Rating and Course Rating.

For many people, the concept of Slope Rating and Course Rating is unclear – could you explain in simple words what this indicator means and how it affects the rating of the course?

Slope Rating is a coefficient on the basis of which it is possible to determine the difference in the difficulty of the golf course for a scratch player (professional level) and the so-called bogey golfer with an HCP of 20 by men and 24 by women. It determines the number of strokes that an amateur player will receive to equal the chances of a draw with a professional player. The scale is from 55 to 155 and the neutral level is 113 – representing the average/standard difficulty of the course.

CR-Course Rating is the result with which a professional scratch player with a zero handicap should complete the round. In Postolowo GC it is 78.8 for men, what is only 0.3 points behind the leading Kiawah Island GR.

Don’t you want to be the No. 1 in the world?

Probably not, although after the analysis we could achieve it easily. 100 hectares of land at our disposal is a rarity and a dream of every golf course architect. Please remember, however, that this would only be practicing art for art’s sake, as the tees we are talking about are not meant for amateur players, except the annual 7101m competition – held in November/December where the roughs are forgiving. As amateurs, we have a whole lot of points from the Slope system as a gift, the results of some players are not that bad.

When staging PGA Tour competitions and above – and anyway, from what the director of the European Tour, Mr. Michael Ericsson, who visited us in 2004 during the try-ons to play one of the tournaments of the cycle in Postołowo, the organiser never sets the course to the maximum degree of difficulty, because the audience prefers when it is the players who win and not the golf course. If Postołowo was played from all back tees, the world’s top players could go down with a score of 79 with their foreheads raised because they played to even and the scoreboard would show +7 next to their score. No one wants that.

The course provides a certain level of possible toughness and the tournament board decide how hard the course should be.

At this point, it should be mentioned that Postołowo, according to the architect’s concept, consists of 4 different golf courses: from the above-mentioned „monster” (7101m) accessible only to professionals, through demanding but playable yellow tees (6194m) for players with a handicap of less than 9, then very comfortable and forgiving (5818m) from blue tee to, as we heard from the participants of the last Polish Junior Championships, „too easy” from the red tees (5071m).

Referring to Jachowicz’s words – „You praise others, you don’t know your own” – do you think that this success will help in the promotion of Polish golf in Poland and abroad?

Certainly. As far as we are concerned, it can already be seen in the number of visits on the website and queries. It turns out that just as in mountaineering there are „hunters” of 8-thousanders, so in golf there are seekers of extreme thrills, whose goal is to play all the most difficult golf courses in the world. We are high in the ranking, so it is to assume those people won’t miss us. In order to really move forward with golf in Poland, it is necessary to change the law on real-estate taxes and elect the boards of the association that have a reliable program and the ability to implement it, instead of organizing golf galas for the environment without achievements.

In connection with this achievement, can we expect to organize an international tournament with the participation of the world’s leading golfers in the future?

This ranking is just a sort of sort. The USPGA and PGA’s of Europe know our field well. We can get DP Tour to Polish on the fly. In 2019, we received an offer from the USPGA to organize for 4 consecutive years, starting in 2022, the World Cup (formerly Mission Hills) with a prize pool of USD 8 million every year, i.e. at the Grand Slam level. Unfortunately, we did not meet their requirements to cover the costs of global marketing and organization of the tournament in the amount of USD 5 million, because the Polish National Foundation preferred to spend the same amount on creating a web portal in the USA promoting Poland, which is visited by 15 people per month. The value of our global promotion for this money was USD 93 million. We are wasting huge opportunities. Assuming that the World Cup must work out, in 2019 we started building a new social facility required to stage world-class competitions, which now gives us the opportunity to apply for any competition. But it takes two to tango.

In your opinion, should institutions such as the Polish Tourism Organization or the authorities of the city of Gdańsk take more active advantage of this success to promote the region and sports tourism?

I don’t know. It seems that they are doing a very good job, because Gdańsk has become the pearl in the crown of Polish tourism. Just imagine if this global marketing worth USD 93 million related to the staging of the World Cup would work out and the best tourist clientele would start coming to Gdańsk, which are traveling golfers, who spend on average several dozen percent more than the average tourist. Everyone would benefit.

Did you faced increased media increased media interest after revealing this rating?

Yes, the phone rang. The funniest was an editor not related to golf, who asked whether due to Mr. Trump’s hypersensitivity and the fact that his flagship Trump International West Palm Beach golf course lost to Postołowo, can we rule out the possibility of imposing additional tariffs on Poland in addition to the existing ones.

Finally, how do you assess the title of our interview: „You praise someone else’s, you don’t know your own”? Does it reflect your philosophy and approach to creating Postołowo?

I think that the title is universal and concerns many areas of our lives in Poland. After all, every now and then we are surprised by some news that is hard to believe.

The success of Postołowo Golf Club is not only a reason to be proud, but also proof that Polish initiatives – if conducted with passion, consistency and vision – can compete with the best in the world. Perhaps this is the perfect moment to re-appreciate what is native and to repeat with full conviction after Jachowicz: „You don’t know what you own