Peter Hallberg is what one might call a golf entrepreneur. In 1993, he was working at a construction site and one day read in the local newspaper about bids to operate a large Malmö-owned golf complex on the city’s beachfront across from Copenhagen. Being an avid golfer, Hallberg ultimately won over 16 other proposals.
The Malmö Golf Center is a golf instruction facility, with Hallberg’s firm operating the driving range, practice holes, the par-3 course and a miniature golf course. All in all, it is a pretty lean operation staff-wise. The Golf Center has remained popular over the past decade seeing over 25,000 players on its par-3 course annually and more than 200,000 yearly visits to the driving range and training area.
Peter Hallberg has a particular passion for “links golf” popular in the British Isles, the birthplace of golf. Links golf courses feature natural environments, focusing on the land, sea grasses, native groundcover such as heather, and other elements such as water and wind as part of the playing terrain. Many courses in Scotland, Ireland and Wales are of the links style, with Sweden having several — three of them located in an area just 30 minutes from Malmö.
Hallberg recognized that revenues from his Malmö Golf Center had been flat for the past few years. In 2005, his twelfth year running the golf center, he began looking for new opportunities. He realized that the golfing industry in Sweden was experiencing a number of challenges due to the global economic situation, environmental concerns, changes in consumer lifestyles, and difficulty in attracting new and younger golfers to the sport. Nonetheless, Hallberg mused about the opportunities in southern Sweden for a new type of golf course, one that better responded to golf’s economic and environmental challenges as well as changes in golfers’ lifestyles and recreational preferences. He reasoned that it might be possible to transform some of the problems in Sweden’s golf industry into an opportunity for his golfing business. He knew it would not be easy and he would have to hit a real “sweet spot” in the golfing market.
Read more on how a Swedish entrepreneur responded to an industry crisis by balancing environmental, economic and lifestyle issues: Reinventing the Game of Golf in Sweden

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