Golf Resort Bad Griesbach

The verdict

Bad Griesbach is not a single course, it is a golf town. The Quellness resort spreads five eighteen hole championship layouts, plus shorter academy and practice courses, across the rolling farmland of the Rottal between Passau and the Inn valley, which makes it one of the most concentrated stretches of golf anywhere in Europe. For a buddies trip or a society that wants to play a different eighteen every morning without ever moving hotel, there is nowhere quite like it on the continent.

The headline acts are the Beckenbauer and the Porsche, both shaped by Bernhard Langer with the German architect Kurt Rossknecht, and both built to a championship standard the European Tour has tested in competition. Around them sit the Brunnwies, the St. Wolfgang Uttlau and the Lederbach, each with its own character, from rolling parkland to water lined tournament golf. The golf is genuinely good, the conditioning is reliable, and the value, by the standards of the great resorts, is excellent. It is a German classic of a very modern kind: scale, polish and a tee time for every taste.

The holes worth the trip

The Beckenbauer Course is the one to build a trip around. Named for the late football great and routed along the Rott river, it is the resort's tournament layout, a par 72 of around 6,500 meters where water is the defining hazard: a cluster of holes brings carries and lay ups into the reckoning, and the closing stretch around the ninth and the eighteenth asks for nerve as much as length. This is the ground on which the Porsche European Open was decided in 2015 and 2016 and where the Paul Lawrie Matchplay was staged, so the player who controls the ball and respects the water will be rewarded, while the one who attacks every flag will pay.

The Porsche Course, opened in 2003, is the other championship test, a par 71 again shaped by Langer and Rossknecht, with firmer, more strategic ground and bunkering that demands a thought off every tee. Between them the Beckenbauer and the Porsche give a visiting group two genuine championship rounds in a single short walk of the same clubhouse village.

What lifts Bad Griesbach above a simple numbers game is the variety of the supporting cast. The Brunnwies rolls through hillier, more dramatic country to the north, the St. Wolfgang Uttlau is the mature elder of the group, opened in 1990 to a Rossknecht design, and the Lederbach completes the set. A four night stay can take in a different championship course each morning and a relaxed academy round in the afternoon, all without changing your base, which is exactly the trip the resort was built to deliver.

Where to stay nearby

Bad Griesbach is rare in that the hotels are part of the golf: the resort's own spa hotels sit among the courses, so a stay and play package puts the first tee minutes from your room and the thermal spa waiting after the round. The historic city of Passau, where the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz meet, makes a characterful evening trip a short drive away.

The resort is a natural anchor for a wider Germany golf trip through Bavaria, and pairs easily with a stop across the border in nearby Austria.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels at Bad Griesbach.