Our first course diaries episode from 2023 comes from the world renown Utrecht De Pan. One of the finest inland courses in continental Europe and the product of Colt’s genius, we got to sit down with club archivist and neurologist Ernst van den Doel. As well as the club and course we also talk about the evolution of golf in The Netherlands / Holland, the primitive game ‘Colf’ which is still played in bars around The Netherlands today, and the game more generally.
Huge thanks of course go to FootJoy as our series sponsor for helping make this possible!
hello and welcome back to another episode of the cookie jar golf podcast I am Tom Mills and today we are bringing
you the second podcast from our Netherlands series this is coupled with a film we’re going to be releasing this evening the
utrecht’s golf club De Pan film which will be releasing at 7pm this evening Tuesday the 24th of January
and in this episode we speak to the club archivist of De Pan, Ernst Van den Dole and we spoke to him
about Colts work in the Netherlands and and how the club evolved over the last 90 years big thank you to our series
sponsor FootJoy who helped us make this trip a reality we’re lucky to get partnered with such an iconic brand and
FootJoy the number one shoe on tour trusted by more PGA players than any other tiny bit of History FootJoy goes
all the way back to 1857 with Frederick Packard hence the name of one of the Premier series models broke away from
his father’s boot Workshop to establish a shoe company focused on quality performance and Innovation and 150 years
later they’re still the best in the business the first introduced membrane free waterproof shoe first to bring you
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1857 and now the premier range once again we’re delighted to be partnering with FootJoy in this series
and for more information on FootJoy head over to at FootJoy Europe or visit
www.footjoy.co.uk and without further ado over to Ernst
so you were saying about the late
1890s everything just came at the Modern Man all of a sudden Sports a lot of a
lot of sports inks came over from England you know also in France uh you had a jockey club which was founded and
people became interested in sports in general and especially the landed gentry
the nobility became interested in golf mostly through one or two persons who introduced it here
a well-known person was Ernst Kramer who spoke to
circles were small everybody knew each other each other of course so when they
started in The Hague he came over to Dorne The Village near here to give an
informative evening and people grew enthusiastic and found it after the
Hague in 1893 they founded the doors Golf Club in 1894 and it started in
Dorne but after a few months they decided that the header was too complicated over there and they found a
new Terrain in driebergen which is still Captain named the door Into Golf Club and they had a nine-hole course there
where many competitions were played but they were forced out of it because the proprietor of the estate bonded
is a state back so the clip was forced to move and Harry Colt was all that was
already 20 years one of the top architects in Europe and he was asked by
the kanama golf club to develop the course there and because everybody at the camera knew people at the door to
Golf Club they thought well that this is a very interesting idea let’s ask Harry called to develop our course and he
agreed and he made a plan for nine holes here and during the time he was all over
Europe he developed at the same time he traveled from England to Holland and from Holland to Hamburg where he
developed falkenstein yeah and he went to Madrid where
wasn’t there because Simpson worked a lot in France and some parts of Belgium
Belgium and then Cole almost takes it on then beyond it into it’s almost like they had a dividing line of a thing that
was unintentional I think it works the same you look for a good Carpenter you
ask one of your friends do you know a good Carpenter and they say well I know Johnson and you asked Johnson and so
from from knowledge of the game they are called
and something’s happening next Thursday Thursday ladies group someone’s
holding Court in the other day perhaps they’re closing down the clip house killing down doors oh thank you so much
for joining the podcast I mean I feel like a story about Japan is going to be a lot of a story about Colts and the
involvement and the creation of this course played this morning wonderful place before we get to that can we
almost jump back six to seven hundred years and talk about the Dutch origins of golf because before
we started recording you were saying some interesting stuff I think about cough and where we think the modern game
that we know and love today possibly came from well yes ball and stick games are
perhaps as old as Humanity the inventor of the ball was perhaps just as important as the inventor of the
wheel but it’s well known that during the 13th
14th 15th century stick and ball games were played in Flanders and also in the
Netherlands and there were intensive ties between for instance Scotland and
the Netherlands and so the uh well theories that those games were
introduced into in Scotland from Flanders and there are there’s proof of that also
linguistic proved that because many terms in Scottish come from Flemish
um but well in the Netherlands it developed in two ways played on the
outside on ice and on land and finally it developed into Inland courses which
is the game of golf which is written with a k k o l f which is played in
Quartz in a building and it’s quite small and from there on
the The Cove remained although it’s very small today but the outside Cove has
disappeared the way we’re talking just before we started to record this podcast
um it’s still it’s still a sport you can play it’s still some if you wanted to go play golf you could find a society that
does it and play it um it’s still an active sport it’s still an active sport but played by
quite a few people there’s a Royal Dutch Cove society which has about 200 members
and there are about I think 10 15 courses in the Netherlands which play competition
among each or each other but it’s difficult to to start playing that you
have to have instructions you have to find the place but you could go there you could go to to a building to a cafe
where where there’s a course of golf and when the rules are explained to you you
could do it and it’s very relaxing it’s it’s it’s a game for a beer and a
relaxing Sunday here Sunday afternoon do you think the golfers we know it
um came from call for do you think they are separate entities
well there is a there’s a has been written a lot about this and many things
are uncertain but from kind games like golf played on the outside of the game
of golf developed but in a in a let’s say in its own fashion it it certainly
the game as it’s played over a golf course with with bunkers and greens and so on they’ll certainly be developed in
in Scotland and not in the Netherlands but perhaps the idea to play with sticks
and balls on the outside on grass was an idea from Flanders
amazing so your little work as a historian here and your
um neurologist by by trade yes where does the the passion for the
history come in and how do you find the time because I get the sense that your job probably doesn’t it’s probably not a
light touch job you must be a busy boy so where do you find the time and how do you where does the passion come from for
the history well it’s always difficult to ask where passion come from sometimes it’s natural
uh but well neurologists just are what
we call let’s say an intellectual part of Medicine
it if it involves the brain and thinking about a function of the brain and how it
works so there are many people in neurology who are interested in secondary things like history and I was
interested in history and from history in general in history of medicine grew history of golf because golf is at least
as fascinating as medicine some would argue more but it is a great
game when you understand the history and the connection because there’s something to understanding the tapestry of the
courses in the Netherlands and you know where you know where Cults design
principles come from and how that this would feel like a golden age course you’re over 100 years old versus
something that’s new build and I think an appreciation for the history is key you’ve written a wonderful book here
it’s in Dutch I will add so I don’t I’m it’s going to look great on the bookshelf but it’s unlikely to be to be
read in full until I’ve completely learned how to speak the language um can you sort of tell us a little bit
about the course I mean on the back you’ve put a a brilliant letter from Colton here which basically says you
know that the sites is one of the best Inland courses I’ve ever seen I think you can rework and the worker quiz appears to be
quite satisfactory I hope that everything will go well during the winter months with kind regards you’re
sincerely HS cult P.S my secretary my secretary will sign this as I have to
leave home very shortly and that was written in November 1927. so obviously
Colt was prolific yeah I’m assuming that the the club had a lot of recommendations from friends
and Associates to use cult he must have been given a wonderful piece of land but what he’s left there
is absolutely outstanding what do you know about Colt’s involvement and building the course well I’ve read and and kept most of his
uh the club has kept I must say to be honest most of his correspondents with
um the man who was Secretary of the club at that time Mr Pelletier yeah and
um yes well you see gold was very diplomatic
I of course I used what he wrote that we have one of the best courses Inland
courses on Europe but I’ve discovered in the course of the years that he used to write similar letters to all our clips
that he developed so every to keep everybody happy but we still see it as
as true and I put it also on the on the plaquette that you see over there on on
the house just to inspire people when they start on the first hole but gold
worked very fast that I was very impressed by also his his letters that
he wrote to the Secretary of the cannaba golf club which was developed first before the pump uh you see he came and
um he walked through the through the country and in his mind already he saw
the possibilities and he asked on the camera he asked for 180 sticks of three
feet and he put out the course and he went back to England and a few days later they had the whole course designed
and I recently um read a story of swindley forest which
was about the same he walked through the forest and he said here we’ll come and he started with the pastries and then
from the past race he developed the other courses and then in 27 28
he designed the first nine whole the first nine holes and there was a
discussion about who would do the construction because he liked somebody from England but the firm kopen was
chosen a very famous Dutch Garden architect and developer
also who also constructed the camera and the work was very satisfactory so he
was very enthusiastic about Mr cupain and the first nine will hope holes were
opened and everybody was very happy and very soon the club decided to develop the second nine holes which were opened
in 1932.9 or the front design or is it a mix about it’s a mix yes the first nine
holes as they were produced do they exist yes they still exist but with different teeing grounds okay for
instance you played the fifths I don’t know if it left a lasting memory yeah but in the fifth season part five which
goes to the right but the teeing ground was first more to the left yeah so so
the design in its entirety is pretty much identical just a few just a few tea boxes pushed about yeah and and one
green two greens have been changed that’s the the fifth it has been
um put more to on the right side but it will be changed in the coming years so we’re going back to the original
well more or less yes well to keep the the spirit of the original whole and the
12th was lengthened was one of the dramatic stories of the 60s we had a
president Mr kokum for lemon and we had a very small group of members and Mr
kokum from lemon was a very good golfer also a good International amateur but he
acted on his own when he decided to lengthen the 12th and suddenly the
members discovered that he had moved the green backwards and that and so he
didn’t lengthen it by moving the T no he likes it by moving green yes so I was
just thinking oh yeah I suppose that could play better from a bit shorter but then I say that about every golf ball so
he moved the green back yes how far did they uh did he add to it
about 30 meters yeah see there’s that little area grass actually so when you say that backwards into a hill yes but
uh well but by and large it’s pretty much how does that how did that go down with the membership it ended his presidency oh really yes but he still
remade a very much appreciated member but uh the people didn’t like it and how
did he get away with it you know it’s not it’s not quick to just develop a green is it you know no no no but well
you can you can start by saying oh we’re doing some course management and um certainly people discovered during the
course management that many uh that’s a profound change in the whole hole but it
was corrected later about 20 years ago the the green was corrected in its present shape okay so it’s now back to
its original place yes okay no not its original place it’s your original form uh okay also the T has been moved
backward yeah okay well those are details uh uh 90 of the
course is still as it was developed by by called so during the time of the development and cult was
was was coming along I saw that saw the course what was the state of Dutch golf
like was it was it a popular sport no it wasn’t a popular sport at all there were a few thousand players who mostly knew
all each other if you say you’re reports of matches in those days in in
sporting journals that show you always meet the get the same names you’re perhaps in professional golf now also
but there were about five thousand six thousand players at at a maximum yeah so
you’ve got very few golf courses when when did that start to change in the
Netherlands well many golf courses were constructed around 1930 let’s say the Eindhoven sir
and the Domo and then it stopped more or less and during the 50s and 60s a few
courses were added yes and then the great golfing boom came in the 90s and the 80s what do
you think caused that everything became more popular people became more affluent and
um interested in sports in general and and well we nowadays we have 250 golf clubs
in Netherlands it was an enormous race to to develop golf courses
I get the sense there’s a pretty uh strong relationship between the old clubs
within the Netherlands you have the is it the old nine yes it’s called the old mine which is very interesting because
it’s in fact it’s the old eight what I always say hello there is a clip at the Rotterdam which
was founded in 1970 but sees itself as the successor to the Rotterdam golf club
which was founded in I think 1936 also the Rotterdam golf club is not one of
the older nine golf clubs but brookpole is there and is there to stay but that’s
a that’s a sort of a collection of courses where you know I’m guessing there’s some friendship there there’s
probably some matches and days and members of those clubs can play each other’s venues as well can’t they this
is a reciprocal yes it exists for a limited fee yeah yeah
um talk to me about the course then so in in terms of your history you know historical work looking at the work that
colt did as you say working quickly I find that amazing but what you’ve got is an amazingly natural
looking golf course it’s it’s a masterpiece in many respects I’m sure that’s not all cult clearly a lot of
that’s down to the building work and and and who produced the course and tried to get the right Contours and put the
greens in did you stumble across anything particularly interesting when you’re doing stuff for the book about how the course was constructed or
um well there’s a little bit in there the firm of copain still exists and they
have an archive but a very limited Archive of how it was done yeah and Cole
wrote also about that because he inspected the course and and discussed the grass and where they should buy new
grass and how this should be done and that should be done but he was very involved in all construction also the
construction of the greens one of the members who’s very good on grass explained to me that uh
because the irrigation was limited at that time many greens were built with a
slight Hollow so that the water when it fell would remain on the green to keep
the green moist right really so they’ve almost bowed
them a little bit I don’t know it’s true but it’s an interesting aspect of course and called the world also about too many
rabbits and well all aspects of the course that had to be attacked by the
committee what what are your favorite features of course uh well there are a few points where
where you stand and you look over the course and you think oh this is beautiful it’s uh on the 16th and on the
elevator T of the 17th and well also
perhaps where you are at the Crossing point of the fourth the eights and the nines where you see all three holes
played fourth is a wonderful grain with the bank that comes in off the left
and and none of this is modern this is all put down a hundred years ago nobody’s it remains fascinating you know
everybody can construct a large pond or water in front of a green or a green on
an island in a pond it’s always difficult but the genius of an architect especially I call this
uh and he wrote about it everybody knows that if you have a par four it should be
difficult to make a two a two to reach the green and two but it should be
relatively easy to reach the Green in three yeah so that you always have a chance of a power
and also there has been a lot of discussion here about it that the course was of course not for high
Drop shots because people didn’t play it people played a lot of running shots so it’s about the angles yes and the hills
the correctable and where you play cleverly you can um direct the ball along a hill onto the
green for instance on the first here there’s quite a few kickers as well on the greens aren’t there there’s quite a few shots I saw today I mean we played
with Byron two’s you know a brilliant golfer I mean he’s been planning dutchama to Champion and he’s very a
number of things so these weren’t accidents but you can see he’s intentionally using the Contours within
the greens to move the ball and spin it around so when that gets firm I bet it comes alive you know when the course is
fast yeah the course is more interesting when it’s dry yeah but people don’t like to hurt they like it harder yes of
course yeah one of the consequences of working quickly is as cult did is you
kind of can’t be on site that much um did he visit often during the
construction did he come back on completion what do we know about that yes well there are also correspondence
about that he traveled a lot and he came regularly to inspect which was easier for him because he was involved in many
courses around northern Europe and in Spain so on his travels he visited
the very intelligent he visited a few golf clubs and wrote got back to England
and wrote what should be changed he made notes and those notes are left on golf
clubs and you could see what his suggestions were so he was a traveling golf salesman was there ever a
temptation to put more in because we’re in a yeah we’re in a heavily wooded area where the course is completely carved
out within that but there’s loads of space around was there ever throughout the last hundred years any temptation to
try and add a further nine another 18 holes I get the sense it’s not quite the Dutch way
to try and build loads of golf courses on one site do you mean here or down I don’t know I just I get the sense that
yeah Canada’s obviously a 27 hole site but by and large even though there’s a bit of land
everyone’s quite comfortable the fact that it’s just an 18-hole course and if you’ve got something perfect why improve
on it yeah the the Germans have a an expression for that which is called slim
Besson that is making it worse but making it better yeah there’s a lot can
we cover that again slim Bassin City means people having
something great then thinking where to make it even better destroying it yes
actually miss worse this one is improved so shrimps improve it to make it worse I
think that’s my new favorite saying yeah but the number of clubs that do it because they want to let’s build a
bigger Clubhouse you have the most incredible Clubhouse here why would you ever want to change it you know these
like you say you’ve got a great golf course why would you want to compromise that with more golf I could give you a
let’s say an example that people perhaps won’t like but it’s the same with brexit
you’ve got something that’s very good you’ll think well we’ve got the something’s very good it could be even
better and there you change it and you discover after a few years that there are a lot
of disadvantages to it that’s here is that I mean just let’s just human nature well this is it let’s
dig in on that a little bit because you know part of your work human nature is to always think the
grass is greener on the other side perhaps an English expression I don’t know we have the same expression in
Dutch is it is that is that true is that human nature yes it’s human nature from from my profession for instance plastic
surgery you know people start improving small things and they look at themselves and they say well this could be better and
they end like robots and it becomes there’s a point of elasticity where yeah
you you can’t you don’t need it plastic surgery bigger is not always better and
I can’t can’t get the Lord speaking of of
slim Besson yeah very good I’m fascinating on this topic this is amazing
are the greens committee here pretty strident in thinking okay we
don’t do anything big we don’t make any big changes all we do is maintain it make sure the bunkers are as good as
they can be make sure the plane surfaces are as good as they can be or do you get some people come in and say I think
right some sweeping changes need to happen well there have always been members who
thought that sweeping changes should be made but mostly we keep it
um as it is intended and in the course of the years of course changes you know trees grow grass grows when we’ve got a
small movie uh which you can visit on YouTube about
the opening of the first nine where people dance here on the Terrors and the
first ball is hit and everybody who runs onto the first uh hole and you see a
enormous um the word Escape me but there are no trees at all expands but it almost
expands yes it’s very fast there are nearly no trees at all so all the trees that are there are partly have grown
maybe you see a small tree and when you don’t take any notice about five years or later it’s large but it’s the wooded
area here when the course was built though so was it all it was more header than it is now because now it’s a full
wooded yes Mansion isn’t it all around but you can see when you yeah when you come to the club you can see that most
trees are not very old there are 100 Year trees or there are but many trees are younger were they planted
um for the purpose of golf in many ways so no they weren’t there for separation of holes or anything it’s just happened it
wasn’t this was a very poor area you know header what can you do with head or sheep and header and not much more than
that so what the owners of the the estate did was plant trees for
um to sell wood mostly for the mines in the Netherlands in the south of the Netherlands for mine construction
then then it was profitable but and later uh
the company that owned all this area later sold part of it for housing estate
so the village of zeist here in the neighborhood was developed in the in the
1900s 1920s 1930s and it’s all kind of
because now like like Sam says if if you’d have just taken me out there I would have thought that that was carved
out of the Woodland as opposed to and it’s interesting partly because we um we went to Eindhoven and played there
yesterday and there’s some old photographs are Eindhoven and similarly the trees are as big as the humans you
know that’s it’s just this why is that again it’s human nature isn’t there so clubs are really yeah and so I find
clubs are really quick to put radical changes into their courses yeah I mean look at that these are images from the
construction of the of the first nine holes and you see that there are trees yeah but uh it’s quite meager not many
trees not as as it is now and it doesn’t look appetizing does it it looks like quite rough ground and you look at you
know where it is now today it’s incredible well there are many pictures more or
less the same I I know pictures of Saint George’s Hill you know also constructed by coal you see the same pictures horses
manure trees being felt and why do humans well certain humans at
golf clubs react slightly differently when they talk about tree removal in the context of a golf course
do you see what I mean some members seem to almost have a romantic obsession with a tree on a golf course people don’t
like changes but yet they quite like to make slim Besson and changes that they you
know what about I think I I agree with you they don’t want to see a tree go but they’ll be quite happy to see the
members Lounge completely redecorated and it oh did oh no even that leads to discussions we’ve had a recent
redecoration here the tables at which you sit or have recently be added well and on a clip it’s always like this you
do something and a part of the membership disagrees you just need majority don’t you because you can’t
please everybody yes and there’s something to be said for to to appoint somebody to execute it yeah and no
discussion about it we have to accept it because if you were one of my examples is if you would have
asked the populace of France if Versailles should be built they would have said no waste of money but now it’s
there everybody admires it that’s a difficult thing about construction like
that like that but there are many trees have been felt here because
about 20 years ago everybody realized that the course was changed and it was not in its advantage and that it could
be made better in its original shape for instance on the 15th the short parf 3 on
the left there’s a hill and that Hill is part of the course and it was overgrown with threes and they removed the trees
and the hole was better and it just comes I think I think the thing is you know if you if you stared at the sun you
wouldn’t see it move and you just think oh the sun is there and you look back an hour later and it’s somewhere else and it’s the same with golf courses and
trees if you look at them day by day nothing changes and it slowly creeps up on you that these trees are just very
very slowly just overtaking and I think that’s the thing that a lot of people forget is that yeah it might have been
like this yesterday and you’ve you’re attached to this tree but it wasn’t like it a year ago and it really wasn’t like
it 10 years ago and it’s just it’s very difficult for a club like like Japan to just keep on top of
the playing corridors this is what we’re trying to maintain this is what we’re trying to keep and just make not taking
it back too far not letting it grow over just maintaining the status quo it’s quite sometimes you have to look back at
how how was it if you have documents about it or photographs you have to look at photographs of 50 years ago how was
the whole at that time but people adapt to slow changes
you know if you there are moving stories of people of 90 who meet each other in
a retirement home and fall in love and so on and when one of the partners would
have been 20 he would never have fallen in love with somebody of 90 but when you’re 90 yourself yeah you viewed
changes you know it’s strange and I I almost want to go down
we’ve had a previous guest to the podcast on who’s quite big on you know heuristics and Behavioral Science and
looks at things like that it’s quite an interesting topic um do you see anything else in the human
brain otherwise we as human operates how we as humans operate
do you see anything in there in Golf specifically that you find fascinating the optimistic nature of of human beings
you know when you’ve played a very bad round you always uh
think and hope that the next round will be better I mean in my case it can’t
often get much worse so do you think about it so do you mean golfers are more optimistic than they would otherwise be
in other parts of their life or do you mean no that’s human nature but it expresses itself in in golf you think
and yeah hopeful very hopeful very hopeful yes I mean not many people uh
play the round of their life literally the lowest round they’ve ever played and don’t say oh and I left a couple out
there I could have I could have done better yeah there’s always that that thing that we would we think we can do
better I do think there’s there’s a really fair saying with this and I know we’re going off topic here but this is quite interesting we’ve got an expert
with us people say that you know playing golf with someone gives you a
very quick insight into their personality and what they’re like as an individual it’s a very it’s a it’s
almost as true a reflection if it’s a human being playing a game of golf with someone I don’t know why that is is it
just because the game is so finely balanced that brings out all the emotions in you in a way that’s almost uncontrollable
oh what well the game is technically difficult and it’s a slow game and you
play it for many hours so you’ve got if you play a game that lasts 10 minutes
it’s more difficult to judge your character with if you play for four hours you get a better View
and it’s very tempting some sometimes to cheat
and if you look at it a lot of people are can be discovered to cheat a little bit you say well it’s easy to change it
suits you to cheetah you think oh that’s not fair that happened to me that’s not fair I should be compensated for it so I
made drop my ball here or I give it a kick out of the header or whatever I
wouldn’t have missed that part anyway if I was trying yes or there was a dog barking and if a dog had embarked I
would have missed that but so that that was good you know and it relies on honesty and
its foundation doesn’t it and it’s you get so many bad breaks and good breaks in equal measure
and it’s one of those you know if we ran you can only run to your level and you run consistently at the level you’re
capable of running a golf you can play way better than you’re ever capable of playing golf one day and you can turn to
the next day and play significantly worse than your you know you’re capable and I think all of those frailties bring
out a lot in people where I I think there’s a lot of Truth in that saying for what it’s worth that you can you can
really get the measure of a human being when you play with them yes and most people play golf for many years and
during those many years you always you all have had a moment where you thought you had it all
and everything was under control you are in the flow and you hit it where you want it mostly it lasts
perhaps half an hour and then you lose it again but you will always dream of getting that back what’s happening in
the brain when you’re in Flow State because you know Sports psychologists talk about this down there that flow
State most golfers of any ability can relate to that feeling where you almost
feel you’re doing stuff subconsciously to an elite level what’s happening is the
brain in a different space when it’s in Flow State and what does people always think that neurologists understand that
but it’s completely wrong we don’t understand anything at all um one theory is that you close down a
part of your brain especially the control part where you think continually see about what you’re
doing you shouldn’t think about what you’re doing you know perhaps the book by Homer Kelly the golfing machine which
was that you train for so long for so many times that you become a golfing machine you become
instinctive yes but what what happens you always start to think about your game
oh I shouldn’t hit it to the right because there’s water there or there are people there what happens when you think I don’t shoot here do right you hit it
to the right that’s how your brain works well I I once knew a cardiologist a very
very Gifted Man Who said I’ve reached everything in life I’ve had a beautiful
academic career I can play violin marvelously why can’t I play golf and he couldn’t play golf you could see him
hacking in his way around the course with grass flowing up everywhere but and
he was fascinated by that dragging it back to uh the course itself momentarily because I’m just a bit
concerned that Sam is going to be down this Vortex down this rabbit hole for quite some time so bring it back to the
golf uh the golf course um did Harry Colt visit when the A-Team
were completed and do we have any uh any correspondence about his his impressions
of the place when it was finished yes especially the first nine holes
there are is less correspondence regarding the second nine holes but
there are letters that he was very satisfied with the work also with the work of the firm Cobain in constructing
the course yes the club has obviously grown from
strength to strength you’ve now got quite an active membership about how many about 800 should I hear 850 about
850 which is really strong strong membership and the clubhouse that was set in the beautiful clubhouse that
we’re sat in um is it from the same period as yes it’s from the from 1928 it’s from the first
nine horse this clip house was constructed absolutely gorgeous building isn’t it and um
what do you think is in the future for food track Japan
well we are in the in the happy position that many people want to want to join
the club you know your limit now is 8 50 that yes yeah yes that’s quite enough
and and the club has changed uh in the 60s there were about 450 members and the
club was struggling but nowadays the corrupt is doing financially well
although that can change also we don’t own the ground okay so we pay rent for the ground and
that’s quite an amount but we’ve got safety regarding to the owners of the ground
that we can continue for many years now uh and
um well with the economic situation and the changing of the way of playing the
game many clubs are struggling in Netherlands and the goal Federation is
looking for ways to improve that because the tendency is that people
don’t want to join a clip anymore they want to be to be free golfers you know not to play an annual membership or an
entrance fee or whatever no they pay a contribution to society and then they
pay only when they play and that’s the modern tendency and the modern tendency is also it seems to play nine holes and
not more than that because everybody’s in a hurry you know and fighting all things we like to play lots of holes don’t we we’re going to try for 36 today
I think there’s something to be said for more than our golf but I I think um you know
it is interesting that you you observed that and I think there’s other you know it’s just a culturally there’s
different differences to sport than than what we’re used to in the UK which is something you know this series is also
about um just do you think just just before because we are I know we’re using a lot
of your time and we do thank you a lot for for coming on to chat to us but just before we we um we let you go do you
think that Dutch golf is um doesn’t have a fair share of
visibility or do you think that it it kind of keeps itself a little bit under the radar
um of as being golf as a destination no golf has become quite popular in the
Netherlands you shouldn’t worry about that for the Dutch gold Federation worrying aspect is the age of the
players they want to to keep the youth discovering Golf and playing golf
and are always wondering how to do that here on the club we’ve got many young
players who are very enthusiastic so we don’t worry about it at all
well a comparison you’ve got restaurants and
there are marvelous restaurants who exist for many many years and never have a problem in attracting customers and
there are restaurants who are doing well but struggling and disappearing and coming again I think I have all
confidence that the pump was its marvelous course and it’s it’s nice Clubhouse will go on for many years and
we don’t worry about it at all I suddenly don’t doubt that and with that and thank you so much for joining
the podcast it’s been fascinating it’s been uh it’s been great to to hear more about the club and also some of the
other stuff you’re talking about there so a big thank you thanks for having us as well at the club thank you for having
me an incredible special place thank you thank you
