{"id":885918,"date":"2026-09-09T17:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/885918\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T17:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:30:15","slug":"golf-at-war-australian-golf-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/885918\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf At War \u2013 Australian Golf Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the ground are thousands of pieces of metal that have fallen from the air,\u201d explains Oleksandr Denyskin, General Director of Kyiv\u2019s Lisnyky Golf Club. We\u2019re speeding around the nine-hole course in a golf cart the front seat of which is emblazoned with the Ukrainian coat of arms. \u201cEvery morning after a drone or rocket attack, the greenkeeping team looks in the fairway and rough for shrapnel and pieces of rockets.\u201d Denyskin\u2019s crew uses magnets to draw in debris, but some materials, such as tungsten and titanium, aren\u2019t magnetic. \u201cWe try to take as much as we can from every hole before we cut the fairway. When we started this season, we lost three roller mowers from shrapnel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing our tour between holes, Denyskin scrolls through countless videos on his phone. He\u2019s filmed the night sky illuminated by Russian aerial bombardments being intercepted mid-air by Ukrainian air defenses. Lisnyky Golf Club sits on an important path. If the military can hit the missiles before they plummet into Kyiv city, there\u2019s a high chance the shrapnel will rain down on the golf course.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is taken from my office; that\u2019s the golf course right in front of us. Look.\u201d During the lulls between bangs, there\u2019s the unmistakable high-pitched buzz of Russian attack drones. \u201cEleven times in one night there was an attack over that first hole,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Today, golfers are out leisurely strolling in the sun in a scene that looks practically interchangeable from most any other golf course in the world. The reality is anything but. For one thing, the junior academies that once gave kids a chance to play their first rounds and make friendships are no more. \u201cWe\u2019re not doing it because in 2023 there was a situation where we were really scared about the lives of the guests,\u201d Denyskin says. Now, a maximum of three children can be taught together, and parents must remain nearby.<\/p>\n

Denyskin stops the cart and puts his phone in the cupholder. \u201cBy the way, if you can hear the sound of shooting, don\u2019t be scared. That\u2019s just the [soldiers] learning how to work,\u201d he says and gestures to the military camp that borders the golf course.<\/p>\n

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BAD PITCHMARK: A blasted irrigation pipe is a typical problem for Oleksandr Denyskin (next slide).<\/p>\n

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As a British journalist, I\u2019ve reported from Kyiv on and off for more than four years, trying to understand how the city and its people are adapting in wartime. In unexpected places, such as the nightlife and fashion communities, you find seemingly endless resilience. Add Kyiv\u2019s golf clubs as yet another dimension of city life that has been called on to offer some semblance of normal life.<\/p>\n

Remnants of makeshift defenses can still be seen along the 30-minute drive south of Kyiv to Lisnyky, with empty military posts and camouflage tents lining the edges of the highway. Dozens of anti-tank \u201chedgehogs,\u201d steel barriers used to impede the advance of Russian tanks, are piled up on the shoulders of the roads.<\/p>\n

Just hours after my visit to Lisnyky in 2026, on July 1, the skies above the course once again lit up with Russian missiles traveling up to more than 6,800 miles per hour. Despite the best efforts of the Ukrainian air defense, many reached Kyiv. A total of 74 missiles and 496 drones were launched at Ukraine by Russia overnight, forcing around 52,000 people in Kyiv alone to seek shelter in subway stations. The more than 11-hour bombardment killed at least 30 people and injured more than 90 across the capital.<\/p>\n

Unexpected Growth <\/p>\n

Golf in Ukraine was still searching for its identity when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. In 2021, Ukraine had 1,837 registered golfers. By 2024 that figure had grown to 2,589, with the latest 2025 estimate clipping up to 2,695, according to official data from the European Golf Association. This tiny sporting world, seemingly against all odds, has grown in Ukraine during the war.<\/p>\n

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A destroyed cart at Golf Stream<\/p>\n

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No. 3 at Kozyn G & CC<\/p>\n

Even treating these numbers skeptically due to the obvious difficulties of measuring such a small player base accurately during wartime, the perseverance of this community is undeniable. Golf courses have become a rare space for everyone from teenagers to military veterans and first-time players to take time away from the brutal realities of drone attacks, the blare of air alarms and even frontline combat.<\/p>\n

Denyskin both sees and feels the increase in activity. \u201cFrom this May to June, over 40 new players are going to the golf course by themselves,\u201d he says, with a new golfer at Lisnyky classified as someone who plays at least two rounds in a month without a coach or assistance. Historically, this number was usually \u201csix or seven maximum,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

That the sport continued at all during Russia\u2019s invasion of the country is a form of success, but to grow was unexpected. \u201cFor me personally, of course, I was surprised; it surprised everyone.\u201d Denyskin says, though he thinks he understands the popularity. \u201cIt\u2019s the psychology of golf. People are putting down their mobile phones. They just want to be in the fresh air and think about something different than war and news. Golf is a perfect fit for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the conflicting feelings that can arise from playing a round of golf while soldiers fight and die, that it is frivolous behavior? Life must go on, Denyskin believes, for all people but especially for the veterans, new players and staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when the news is really bad, and a lot of people die, of course, people who are playing golf might feel guilty, and a lot of them are talking about this. But most of these people are living life one day at a time. After each attack, you understand you might not breathe tomorrow. Before, we all had a plan for the future. Today, that doesn\u2019t matter. Life never stops, and nothing can stop life until the last breath,\u201d Denyskin says.<\/p>\n

Kyiv\u2019s golf community, like the entire city, was immediately upended when war arrived. Many players joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine, others fled abroad and the remaining were forced to adapt to a life of almost daily air-raid sirens as they go about their lives in the capital. Still, golf has endured despite freezing winter temperatures, regular power outages, the ever-present threat of Russian bombardments and even the devastation of Denyskin\u2019s former course of employ, the once celebrated Golf Stream Club. \u201cIt was my first golf experience. I started there as a caddie in 2009 and stepped up to be assistant to the head pro.\u201d<\/p>\n

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ALWAYS ON ALERT: Drone debris at Lisnyky G.C.<\/p>\n

Ranked as Ukraine\u2019s Best Golf Course 2022 by the World Golf Awards, Golf Stream Club was a sprawling complex that had an 18-hole championship course that could stretch to 7,536 yards, as well as two nine-hole courses. It was occupied by Russian Armed Forces on Feb. 27, 2022, during the land invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a dark story here,\u201d Denyskin says. \u201cThe Russians chose this place not for fun but because it was well oriented to be the main base for taking Kyiv from the west.\u201d Based near the small rural settlement of Makariv, which sits about 36 miles west of the capital, Golf Stream suffered devastating damage during the Russian occupation and was heavily shelled during the Battle of Makariv. Russian soldiers blindfolded, bound the hands and feet of local civilians and forced them to lie down on the golf club\u2019s open airfields as temperatures dropped to 5\u00b0 Fahrenheit, according to a report by the Ukrainian NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights. Survivors reported that some victims were doused with gasoline and later told to stay lying down as the Ukrainian military began shelling Russian military vehicles.<\/p>\n

In the period that followed, a handful of golfers familiar with the property worked with Ukrainian Armed Forces as unofficial intelligence officers. If a Russian tank was spotted on, say, the seventh green, only people who had played Golf Stream could point out the most precise coordinates on a map where the Ukraine military should shoot. In Denyskin\u2019s estimation, Golf Stream is irreparable. \u201cIt\u2019s too huge a project. I don\u2019t know who can rebuild it. If I received the task, I\u2019d probably just start a new page.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding Peace <\/p>\n

Anna Grytsenko is one of the former coaches from Golf Stream who Denyskin has hired at Lisnyky. Sitting in the modern clubhouse at Lisnyky, in front of an array of new Callaway Quantum drivers and Odyssey Damascus slant putters, it\u2019s difficult for her to talk about the first months of Russian occupation. \u201cIt felt like the loss of reality. I didn\u2019t believe what was going on around me. Every day I just read the news and slept\u2014a lot of sleeping. Hoping every single day for it to stop\u00a0\u2026 I can say that war is not so far away from my home.<\/p>\n

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Ukrainian National Coach Ruslan Garkavenko\u2019s first homemade club.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere at work, you have hot water and electricity, so it\u2019s not bad. It was important this winter,\u201d Grytsenko says. To go along with the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on infrastructure, this past winter in Kyiv was the coldest recorded in 15 years.<\/p>\n

Grytsenko had spent much of her morning coaching veterans as part of a regular program run by the club. A Ukrainian soldier who spent the last three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Russia was part of her group.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was his first time here. He didn\u2019t care so much about how technically he should hit the ball. It was more important for him to talk about what was going on in his mind and meditate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The goal for this soldier, as for so many others, explains Grytsenko, is to \u201cstart the journey back to freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serhii is an active Ukranian soldier who dabbled in golf before the war but has now found new meaning in the game. \u201cI just love being part of it. It\u2019s a gentleman\u2019s game. Here, I am just refilled.\u201d His 11-year-old son is with him and learning to play. Serhii believes that golf is one of the best ways to recover psychologically. \u201cSome people say that it should be all war and nothing else. I think that\u2019s not right because there should be a regular life outside of the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Next Generation <\/p>\n

The Kogan sisters\u2014Yelizaveta, 10, and Veronika, 13\u2014are part of a talented cohort in Ukraine\u2019s national development program. The sisters are originally from the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that sits 25 miles from the Russian border and has faced regular heavy bombardment. One popular course there, the Superior Golf Resort, is still inoperable due to significant damage. The Kogan family moved to Kyiv two years ago and now plays at the 18-hole championship course Kozyn Golf & Country Club. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole family thing,\u201d says their mother, Kateryna, as she proudly watches the girls practice their drives.<\/p>\n

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Sisters Yelizaveta and Veronika Kogan<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m playing, I\u2019m just concentrating on golf, so I\u2019m not worried about everything that\u2019s going on, like the war,\u201d says Veronika, who is currently an 11.9 Index. Veronika shares how the game can be wonderful but only when she\u2019s playing well. \u201cBecause if I\u2019m not \u2026 I don\u2019t know what to say because I think all people who play can understand that feeling,\u201d she says bashfully.<\/p>\n

Ruslan Garkavenko is the head coach of the Ukraine National Golf Team. His introduction to the sport in 2002 was far different from his current students, who have access to well-conditioned courses and launch monitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 13 years old and watched \u2018Happy Gilmore,\u2019 and I just decided, Wow, I want to try this. I really liked that Adam Sandler\u2019s character was not a classical golfer, and when I was young, it was close to my nature,\u201d says Ruslan, a self-described sports junkie who tried everything from soccer to tennis and basketball. Garkavenko went searching for anything golf-related both near and far the small village about 60 miles away from Kyiv, where he was born and raised, but he came up empty-handed. \u201cI found nothing, just nothing, no golf clubs, no coaches, no golf clubs, not even a golf ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went to his family\u2019s garage and set about making the basics. He pieced together a makeshift golf club, found a bouncy ball and used a pen lid for a tee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked out the window and thought, That\u2019s my golf course,\u201d he says about the agricultural field outside his home. \u201cI decided, OK, I will try to play some golf.\u201d When he finally hit a couple solidly, \u201cI just felt, this is what I really like.\u201d To develop his game, he went searching for people who loved golf and could help him get started properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people just gave me what I needed. This is your 8-iron, OK? These are your first three real balls.\u201d He also found copies of Golf Digest printed in Russian and pored over the swing analyses of Tiger Woods. In a couple of years, he started to play in tournaments, eventually becoming a four-time Ukrainian national champion and earning a start on the European Challenge Tour.<\/p>\n

Oleksandr Yavorskyi, the president of Kozyn and vice president of the Ukrainian Golf Federation, organized sponsorship to support Garkavenko going on tour. \u201cWe are going to help you, but you have to spend two times per week teaching us how to play this game, as it looks like you know what you\u2019re doing,\u201d Garkavenko recalls Yavorskyi telling him.<\/p>\n

Though Garkavenko loved the game, he came to the realization that becoming a successful touring professional was out of reach having started so late. He made the transition to coaching golf, a role with increasing need. \u201cWe had around 35 golf coaches in Ukraine and lost almost half of them. Some moved outside Kyiv, and three or four guys just decided, especially in the first year of war, to change their job. I guess about five guys took a gun, went to the army and started to fight against Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kozyn, a home-grown course that evolved gradually over time largely due to the efforts of Yavorskyi and the community he created, has continued operating despite the countless obstacles of a wartime environment. Yavorskyi thinks the resilience of Kozyn can be, in part, attributed to being a haven from the challenges of everyday life. \u201cYou can go for 18 holes and play for four or five hours, away from the reality that is happening. It\u2019s a place to spend time and just relax. Usually on the weekend we have 18 holes, and after this you come to the 19th hole, and you have a beer,\u201d he laughs. Also, the influx of golfers from regions more devastated by the war also fills the tee sheet. Luhansk, a city in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, an area now majority controlled by Russian forces, had the first championship course in the country, aptly named \u201cFirst Golf & Country Club.\u201d It is no longer open.<\/p>\n

Oleksandra Yavorska, general manager at Kozyn, looks through the expansive glass doors of the clubhouse as a bright blue and yellow Ukrainian flag ripples in the distance. She says, \u201cWe know what we\u2019re working for. We need to pay the salaries, we need to continue this golf industry in Ukraine to live. After the sleepless nights, or even when there\u2019s been an attack during the day, a lot of people come here to, if it\u2019s okay to say, just to forget what is happening in Kyiv. \u2026 You spend the whole night in the shelter, then go out in the morning and live your normal life. It\u2019s really hard to say, but we\u2019re getting used to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yavorska also notes the growing interest from younger people. \u201cPeople are getting used to this golf culture that was not common in Ukraine at all, and we have more members aged around 30 to 35 years old,\u201d she says. This new generation works mostly in the technology industry. \u201cIt\u2019s really easy for them to come here to work on a laptop, go play golf, have lunch and continue working,\u201d Yavorska says. A new club tournament for people who are just starting their golf journey has proven popular.<\/p>\n

Kozyn also managed to bring the one-day amateur golf invitational Mercedes Trophy tournament back to Ukraine earlier this year. Yavorska is working on holding more international tournaments. \u201cMore and more people are interested in supporting golf in Ukraine. As soon as the war will be over and borders open again, lots of people will come,\u201d Yavorska says, or hopes.<\/p>\n

The course at Kozyn has developed a reputation as a tough nut to crack with all its water hazards. Local boys often search for golf balls and sell them back to golfers. I meet a group of such kids, bobbing in the water and sifting through the mud with their hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do this every day in summer,\u201d a boy named Artem says. \u201cIt\u2019s better to spend time doing this than watching TV.\u201d A few years ago, these boys sold all golf balls for 20 hryvnias, around 45 cents. But after realizing certain types carry a premium and can sell for up to 50 hryvnias, or just over a dollar, their focus has turned to searching for specific brands. Artem\u2019s most lucrative day ever was a haul of 102 balls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like golf a lot,\u201d says an older boy, who has played before. The youngest among them has yet to play golf. \u201cSomeday, I will,\u201d he says, before returning to join his friends as they head back underwater, ignoring the shrapnel.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIn the ground are thousands of pieces of metal that have fallen from the air,\u201d explains Oleksandr Denyskin,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,1379,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-885918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-features","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}