This is NOT fake news.
Yes Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus Golf Club.
It exists and of course it sits directly on the Artic Circle in a place called Rovaniemi, Finland. Unless you’re a geography major, we’ll point out it’s 500 miles north of Helsinki.
There’s no workshop, no elves but there are reindeer, around 30 of them, enough to provide backup for Rudolph and the rest of Santa’s first-team reindeer.
The club was founded in 1986 and was dubbed with the generic tag — Golf Club of Rovaniemi. Boring, simply boring. It began as a winter-only, ice layout and a few years later, a summer course came forth, if you want to call it that. By 1997, it was a full-size, 6,500-yard layout. A few years ago, the members came up with the novel idea.
Rovaniemi claims to be the Official Hometown of Santa Claus (yeah, they trademarked that), so they expanded the moniker and named the course Santa Claus Golf Club.
The course opens in early March, when the days are longer and the temperatures more tolerable.
The course hasn’t drawn many American golfers but one big name from the world of golf showed up there. Mike Davis of the USGA played in the Santa’s Snow Golf Classic last March.
Maybe, just maybe now that Christmas is past and the heavy work is done, Santa himself can get in some time on the frozen links.
At least the reindeer will be waiting for him.
