Golf At War

“In the ground are thousands of pieces of metal that have fallen from the air,” explains Oleksandr Denyskin, General Director of Kyiv’s Lisnyky Golf Club. We’re speeding around the nine-hole course in a golf cart the front seat of which is emblazoned with the Ukrainian coat of arms. “Every morning after a drone or rocket attack, the greenkeeping team looks in the fairway and rough for shrapnel and pieces of rockets.” Denyskin’s crew uses magnets to draw in debris, but some materials, such as tungsten and titanium, aren’t magnetic. “We 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.”

Continuing our tour between holes, Denyskin scrolls through countless videos on his phone. He’s 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’s a high chance the shrapnel will rain down on the golf course.

“This is taken from my office; that’s the golf course right in front of us. Look.” During the lulls between bangs, there’s the unmistakable high-pitched buzz of Russian attack drones. “Eleven times in one night there was an attack over that first hole,” he says.

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. “We’re not doing it because in 2023 there was a situation where we were really scared about the lives of the guests,” Denyskin says. Now, a maximum of three children can be taught together, and parents must remain nearby.

Denyskin stops the cart and puts his phone in the cupholder. “By the way, if you can hear the sound of shooting, don’t be scared. That’s just the [soldiers] learning how to work,” he says and gestures to the military camp that borders the golf course.

As a British journalist, I’ve 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’s golf clubs as yet another dimension of city life that has been called on to offer some semblance of normal life.

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 “hedgehogs,” steel barriers used to impede the advance of Russian tanks, are piled up on the shoulders of the roads.

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.

Unexpected Growth

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.

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.

Denyskin both sees and feels the increase in activity. “From this May to June, over 40 new players are going to the golf course by themselves,” 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 “six or seven maximum,” he says.

That the sport continued at all during Russia’s invasion of the country is a form of success, but to grow was unexpected. “For me personally, of course, I was surprised; it surprised everyone.” Denyskin says, though he thinks he understands the popularity. “It’s 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.”

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.

“Sometimes 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’t matter. Life never stops, and nothing can stop life until the last breath,” Denyskin says.

Kyiv’s 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’s former course of employ, the once celebrated Golf Stream Club. “It was my first golf experience. I started there as a caddie in 2009 and stepped up to be assistant to the head pro.”

Ranked as Ukraine’s 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.

“There’s a dark story here,” Denyskin says. “The Russians chose this place not for fun but because it was well oriented to be the main base for taking Kyiv from the west.” 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’s open airfields as temperatures dropped to 5° 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.

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’s estimation, Golf Stream is irreparable. “It’s too huge a project. I don’t know who can rebuild it. If I received the task, I’d probably just start a new page.”

Finding Peace

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’s difficult for her to talk about the first months of Russian occupation. “It felt like the loss of reality. I didn’t believe what was going on around me. Every day I just read the news and slept—a lot of sleeping. Hoping every single day for it to stop … I can say that war is not so far away from my home.

“Here at work, you have hot water and electricity, so it’s not bad. It was important this winter,” 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.

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.

“It was his first time here. He didn’t 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.”

The goal for this soldier, as for so many others, explains Grytsenko, is to “start the journey back to freedom.”

Serhii is an active Ukranian soldier who dabbled in golf before the war but has now found new meaning in the game. “I just love being part of it. It’s a gentleman’s game. Here, I am just refilled.” 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. “Some people say that it should be all war and nothing else. I think that’s not right because there should be a regular life outside of the war.”

The Next Generation

The Kogan sisters—Yelizaveta, 10, and Veronika, 13—are part of a talented cohort in Ukraine’s 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. “It’s a whole family thing,” says their mother, Kateryna, as she proudly watches the girls practice their drives.

“When I’m playing, I’m just concentrating on golf, so I’m not worried about everything that’s going on, like the war,” says Veronika, who is currently an 11.9 Index. Veronika shares how the game can be wonderful but only when she’s playing well. “Because if I’m not … I don’t know what to say because I think all people who play can understand that feeling,” she says bashfully.

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.

“I was 13 years old and watched ‘Happy Gilmore,’ and I just decided, Wow, I want to try this. I really liked that Adam Sandler’s character was not a classical golfer, and when I was young, it was close to my nature,” 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. “I found nothing, just nothing, no golf clubs, no coaches, no golf clubs, not even a golf ball.”

He went to his family’s 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.

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

“Some people just gave me what I needed. This is your 8-iron, OK? These are your first three real balls.” 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.

Oleksandr Yavorskyi, the president of Kozyn and vice president of the Ukrainian Golf Federation, organized sponsorship to support Garkavenko going on tour. “We 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’re doing,” Garkavenko recalls Yavorskyi telling him.

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. “We 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.”

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. “You can go for 18 holes and play for four or five hours, away from the reality that is happening. It’s 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,” 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 “First Golf & Country Club.” It is no longer open.

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, “We know what we’re 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’s been an attack during the day, a lot of people come here to, if it’s okay to say, just to forget what is happening in Kyiv. … You spend the whole night in the shelter, then go out in the morning and live your normal life. It’s really hard to say, but we’re getting used to it.”

Yavorska also notes the growing interest from younger people. “People 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,” she says. This new generation works mostly in the technology industry. “It’s really easy for them to come here to work on a laptop, go play golf, have lunch and continue working,” Yavorska says. A new club tournament for people who are just starting their golf journey has proven popular.

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. “More 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,” Yavorska says, or hopes.

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.

“We do this every day in summer,” a boy named Artem says. “It’s better to spend time doing this than watching TV.” 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’s most lucrative day ever was a haul of 102 balls.

“We like golf a lot,” says an older boy, who has played before. The youngest among them has yet to play golf. “Someday, I will,” he says, before returning to join his friends as they head back underwater, ignoring the shrapnel.