Golf Club Kynžvart

  On this hole, you will drive in the direction of a church tower, which sticks out from behind the trees. Let's hope you'll have more luck during your play than St. Margaret's Church, to which the tower belongs. It has burned down twice. The first time was in 1506 when Kynžvar was defeated. It was ransacked and set on fire by the army of two powerful brothers, the Lords of Guttstein. Three years later a new church was built on the ruins of the former Gothic one. The second time the church burned down was on 15 August 1865. The whole eastern district was destroyed by the fire, including about 50 houses, the church, the townhall, the school and the presbytery. One of the few monuments to survive these fires fire is the gravestone of Jan Zedwitz, dating back to 1582. The Zedwitz family owned the Kynžvart domain until 1620 when their entire property was confiscated and assigned to five brothers of the Metternich-Winneburg family. The Metternich family held onto the castle until 1945.

Hole no. 5 - THE WHITE STONE

  Stand at the tee and you'll see it to the right of the green. The beautiful, shining White Stone of Kynžvart. For years it served as a landmark and a venue for romantic encounters. In 1905 the rock still towered to the height of several metres and was also much wider. In the same year, a great part of the bright white rock was blasted away and processed in Heller glassworks in nearby Úbočí. Today the rock is about 2 metres high and 5 metres wide. What is it exactly? It is a quartz outpouring from a Tertiary fault which winds through the gneiss and granite rock all the way from Cheb to Stříbro. The fault is most evident on the southern slopes of the Slavkov Forest around Kynžvart Spa, particularly in the area of the current golf course. In the Bohemian Forest the quartz forms the "Bohemian Quartz Lode". The formations of the lode include the prominent silhouette of Přimda (849 m), which is visible from the hills above the course.

Hole no. 6 - THE WIND

This tee is the highest point of the entire golf course. It is usually windy here and in 80 percent of cases it's the northwest wind.

Wind is basically an air current caused by the rotation of the Earth (i.e. the movement of the Earth's atmosphere) and by differences in atmospheric pressure. Air blows from the valley up to the hills and then back to the valley. In our case, wind blows from Dyleň to the Tachov Furrow, where it runs into the southern slopes of the Slavkov Forest, gaining strength. If you slice, you will therefor slice even more. But if you have time, enjoy the wind. It flows from Bavaria, from a region with no heavy industry, and is therefore one of the cleanest air currents. It is also interesting that the wind subsides in the evening hours and the countryside is buried in silence.

Hole no. 7 - THE SPA

Ground your club and aim for the yellow and white building high up in the forest overlooking the town of Kynžvart. It is one of the many buildings of the local spa. While the history of the town dates back to the second half of the 13th century, when Přemysl Otakar II built the border castle of Kunigeswart on the rocky promontory (the ruin of the castle now overlooks the town), Kynžvart became a spa many years later, when the first mineral springs were discovered here. The remedial effects of the water are supported by the unique local conditions – the location is just above the level of ground fogs, with longer hours of sunlight thanks to its south-west orientation and a constant high air humidity caused by thick mixed forest. For more than a cenutry adults have come here for treatment (particularly of inflammation in the upper respiratory tract and skin conditions), but since 1950 the spa has been reserved for children only. To other visitors, Kynžvart offers the interesting architecture of the town and the unspoilt surrounding nature.

Hole no. 8 - GOETHE

  Drive your ball to the fairway, or somewhat to the left to the small valley. When looking for the ball, you will notice a rocky overhang on the other side, with benches sculpted in the rock under it. Many luminaries used to sit on them, including the Prince of Poets, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And he was not alone: he engaged in lengthy conversations with the beautiful and clever Ulrika von Levetzow of Třebívice in the Litoměřice region. All this despite the fact that Goethe was a 70-year-old widower and Ulrica was barely 18 years old. Young girls attracted the genius all his life. Already at a young age, he made his boring law studies in Leipzig more enjoyable with the company of an innkeeper's daughter Kitty, changing over to 16-year-old Frederike in Strassbourg. In the court of the Saxon-Weimar prince, Goethe enchanted young girls at wild parties and later fell desperately in love with 19-year-old Charlotte Buff, who was unfortunately engaged and adamantly virtuous. However, Goethe also fell in love with Charlotte von Stein, seven years his senior and a mother of seven, and at the same time to spent whole decades with one woman – Christiana Vulpius, who originally worked as a houswife in his home. The longevity of their relationship (which was confirmed by a wedding only after they had been together for 18 years !) was much supported by the fact that Christiana tolerated the poet's lovers, particularly during his trips to Czech spas. But there was one woman she did not tolerate at all ‒ writer Bettina von Arnim (incidentally also a character in Kundera's Immortality), who wanted to have the beloved poet exclusively for herself. Amorous relationships have greatly inspired Goethe, including the short and unconsummated ones. He wrote poems and erotic songs to his first loves and described vividly the rejection by Charlotte Buff in a loosely autobiographical novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. And without his late outburst of love for Ulrika, there would be no brilliant Marienbad Elegy, whose dramatic origin was later described by Stefan Zweig in his Decisive Moments in History.

Hole no. 9 - METTERNICH