171 – Netherlands Tour Pod Part 2

hello and welcome back to another episode of Jar golf podcast I am Tom Mills and today we are looking at part
two of our tour Roundup this again is part of the Netherlands series content
which comprises of seven films that we’re going to be releasing on YouTube and a number of podcasts to go with it again a big shout out to our series
sponsor FootJoy who helped make this trip a reality we’re very lucky to get partner with such an iconic brand and
FootJoy the number one shoe on tour trusted by more PGA players than any other we’re huge fans of the premiere
FootJoy range they come in five designs with a Packard tarlo Flint field and Wicklow all named with a purpose classic
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but anyway on to the podcast

so wrapping up from Part 1 I think you
know where do where do we leave it I I was personally I was in love with a place I was amazed how good it was I was
I felt like the kid that didn’t want to pack it in at soft play that was kind of been dragged out kicking and screaming
if I’m honest and that was the it was the only sad part really I think for me uh and we discussed this so this isn’t
something that’s going to be new to your ears but something that I wouldn’t mind putting on air
um I think if kenoma was in the UK it would be a lot
more prominent in writings than uh than it than it is like I don’t
rankings but it’s I mean I’ve not played all top 100 you know here’s a great example with
the Dutch tour like you know I don’t want to talk about rankings because dangerous it clouds the Judgment but
people can go and look at that the courses we’re playing two of them were world top 100 courses the others don’t
feature they are highly rated courses within the Netherlands but I would say
anyone I’ve spoken to and every one of our hosts that we asked and said where’s your favorite whether it’s their home
club or otherwise gave you a completely different ordering of the five as to what they were so it was so subjective
and yet if you just hunted on rankings you’re gonna be like you know I’ve got to go and tick off A and B which I think
shows you the strength in depth across across the country it was so good yeah yeah that’s so good it’s interesting
because we’re gonna you know the timings are going to be a whether we do The Eclectic 18 before after this
part but um we’ll do it at the end of the series kanama doesn’t appear tons however I’m
I’ve been quite open and so I think it was my favorite course of the trip really wow yeah wow but the thing is
it’s like it’s like choosing your favorite kids yeah I mean you’re always in love with with so many of them but
like kind of ironic is the only person who’s actually not got kids out of the three contributors but yeah
I think um some of the other places like Japan was
obviously breathtaking and some of the other had like really good standout holes that you’re like oh God that’s
amazing and perhaps Canada didn’t have for me um a whole bunch of real standout holes
but I felt that it had the highest average level of and flow average level
Halt and flow for me I thought yeah I’m trying to think how it’s just the intangibles though isn’t it I think
there’s the the yeah I love the feeling of the clubhouse I love that first hole
the ninth hole the tenth hole the golf club above the sign outside you know it’s just they all just playing tonight
another lovely little practice area down to just off the side of the ninth on the B course it was it was just a and it
for me it’s all about the experience you have isn’t it and we stood in the car park in the pitch black but that allowed
me to basically film the sunrise there I just stood there with the sun rising above the clubhouse from where we were
we were I was like yeah this place is just all of the a-holes and none of the BNC that we played but but also the the
when the the light came out because it kind of was overcast for the first half an hour and then that the
light hit it and then when it was overcast like okay yeah because you like you mentioned from the clubhouse you’re
quite High vantage point you look at across the course and think cool I can see that you just go play down there and that’s fairly flat you play up to there
that’s fine um and then the light hit it and it was like
whoa like it’s so ripply it’s so broken it’s just like there’s Shadows
everywhere and it was like this is incredible another interesting point maybe interesting to some not to others
um grass pathways yeah
yeah but the thing about grass Pathways is you say you know you’ve probably drunk all away what was interesting
because of the grass Pathways and the the cut grass between green and tea
from the Drone even without yeah having ever played it you can run the whole
course because you can see how it moves through the land because of those grass
Pathways it’s very obvious it like it creates a exactly yeah Lucas said to us oh you don’t need a course planner
because there’s no signage out there which by the way was really cool like it’s literally there’s no signage whatsoever it’s just like just yeah I
mean it definitely doesn’t win the course Furniture award I don’t know though I like that minimalist sort of
[Music]and the thing is it was all coming from Christian and Lucas and seeing the chairman of greens and the head green
keeper who were totally invested in their craft you know they were dead serious about it like they were that you
could tell Christian was was giving inordinate amount of time of Miss life just to make that course as good as it
can be and it was just so invested in it it’s like there’s guys with me all over the place that are like that but I think
his wife plays there I think his kids play there it’s back to this whole thing of like a really great family ethos
another guy just came out of high school that that he’s like oh no yeah I’m like 42. I think maybe that some of the
elements of I mean terrific skin and just yeah but I think if you’ll indulge
me a little bit the bit the the some of the comparison perhaps with the Dale stuff comes from there is a there’s a
few touches of haughtry influence there some of the greens have had some hauntary stuff done on you can sometimes
tell that’s a bit of hall tree work you know thinking uh holes like back of the 13th grain I think it would be long Par
Four with the funnels entirely at the back you could I thought oh is this some of the watery stuff you can you can see
that which is maybe where it shows off a little bit of that I I think by having that some of that work
the the knock-on effect is that it starts to demand tougher shots it’s a
little bit more pain or certainly in the approach to the greens where some of that had been done I felt like kanama
asked for more shot variation than nordvike for instance
I felt like there was there was a it was more multi-dimensional in terms of things it was asking
um I’d probably go with that so let’s move on to nordvike which we then rushed on tonight which we had about I think we
had 11 minutes to get to and it’s a 20 minute journey to where Google Maps felt it was and it turns out the golf club was at least another mile and a half
further down the road so we were so totally I know we were up against
it aren’t we um still digesting the glipper as we’ve got in the car and just yeah now pedal
down um I’ve driven as quickly and as careful as I could I mean Sam definitely wanted
me to go quicker but I just was sure I was gonna you know spread a cyclist across the windscreen if I wasn’t
careful in fact actually we did see a cyclist who had been hit they were okay she was okay they were
okay I think she might have been the only cyclist in the Netherlands who decided
to wear a helmet so that that’s considering that’s it amazing crashes in the past but yeah we got
there no cyclists were harmed all fine safe made it there probably only 10 minutes
late for the tea time first thoughts on that one bike well it was funny was that we drove in you’re like wow this is like
you’re crazy yes yeah it’s like Marshall yeah can we
stop saying shinivas from a guy who’s just never set foot actually yeah
it was genuinely I mean it’s ridiculous it was like a an alien landscape it was
and and we’ve obviously got out of the car can you explain why what do you mean when you say that so so
so you kind of like you get out the car and you climb up climb up a hill to where the clubhouse
is in the first tiers and then you look at across
the dunes but this isn’t like we’ve talked about the the dunes at
Canada they’re lovely and grasped and everywhere as far as the eye can see
yeah it’s just like but these dudes are as literally as far as you can see and
it’s all sand with like a tiny bit of money the bear aren’t they and they’re Dynamic yeah yeah see what this meant
Dynamic sand dunes yeah they move don’t they so like you have these huge
I don’t want to say Sanskrit because that almost has a connotation nowadays of like something that’s been almost artificially constructed but they’re
like natural Sandy kind of have you seen that movie scrapes the new one um
no and it’s in a desert up in like a like yeah I think I’ve seen a trailer
it’s like that yeah but there’s essentially the kind of Sandy dunes and scrapes just move they kind of open up
somewhere in the Fairway and then they’ll close and then go somewhere else and um it’s all moving five minutes like
yeah it happens over you know periods of weeks and years but they get a harsh wind or something it’ll just blow a load
of this sand away and then onto a different bit but whereas kanama you were like playing
it sort of off to the right on the north south east and west here but beyond the
boundaries of the course Academy you’ve got the race track where I think they have the Grand Prix and stuff and you’ve got yeah you’ve got Apartments you got
houses you’re aware you’re around some accommodation um but
if I did if you drop a random Street Viewer into nordvite golf club and give
them 30 seconds to work it out and Tick Tock as to where they are they ain’t finding it like you could have been
anywhere hmm you could have been absolutely anyways nothing see apart from that quite
um Anonymous was it like a TV Tower or like a a um
was it like a un um no NATO it was a NATO command post wasn’t crazy that’s
the only thing you can see um yeah and the landscape is utterly utterly crazy now bear in mind we’ve had
a few people that talked to us about Nord bike before um previous guests of the podcast David Davis who’s remember that
um the the Land There is revered in the Netherlands as the greatest golfing land that possibly doesn’t make the most of
the land they have there I think that’s generally how yeah unanimous view on that
um but bloody hell the land is good and again we’re lucky enough to play but it’s land they can’t use
like the like the land that’s just beyond sort of like you’ve mentioned earlier okay like uh Novak you can kind of hear
the sea you can’t literally but it you are a stone’s throw from it but it’s all
shielded by Massive dunes and the bit between the clubhouse and the massive Dunes is there must be
like hundreds of Acres of just like you could put 10 or 12 golf courses down there yeah yeah but they can’t touch it
but you actually can’t because the environmental legislation which he mentioned earlier and it’s not just that it’s also really I think they’ve got you
know they’ve got all sorts of different indigenous species in there which sometimes you know it’s probably about a
thousand different species of bat amazingly which is just an absolute weed
in this country like you you cut that stuff back you want it off the golf course they can’t even cut clumps of
buck you know there’s where they have a kind of quid pro quo Arrangement down there where it’s like you’re gonna take out Clump Buckthorn you’ve got to put in
something else that’s like biodiverse and gonna yeah but yeah but it’s interesting Martin I
heardst was saying that um a bit of intro on him please Martindale fortree another absolutely great looking guy good golfer it’s just
like it looks 20 years well six foot funny enough
um but he he was he was our host he was showing us around and he was saying it’s quite contrary to what we get because we
we consider buckthorne weed they they need it for biodiversity we in
the UK generally like to have marum grass Marin grass is quite is a is a grass which
supports Duneland so you can use it to really reinforce uh Julian and it also
is transportable so you can put it in and it can it can help the structure you’ve been doing their entry level exams for Agronomy or something Have you
have you taken up an internship it’s just really yeah Tom McLaughlin in uh
you can transport my own grass um where you can’t do that with many other grasses in traveling let’s get let’s get
James you’ll fix all this but anyway you’re getting it but they think Marin grass is a pest they try and get rid of
it’s something they they don’t want there because it’s not indigenous and it doesn’t help with the biodiversity so it’s kind of like the complete opposite
of of how how we do things sorry they see it as a pest in the
Netherlands yeah it wasn’t well Martin was telling me that it’s not native to the area why do they want to protect it
then no they’re protecting the Buckthorn and they’re trying to get rid of them sorry that was my absolute ignorance
there now the other thing that was explained to me about nordvike was that it had shades of Formby
in so much as there’s pure links holes and then you go through periods where
you go in and out of the trees at the top so it’s like sort of pine trees and I think that’s a fair assessment in terms of that’s a very noticeable
characteristic at Formby um and it’s noticeable for nordvac
um the stuff up there is like way up the top and you kind of have to as the course is rooted nordvike is the only
one that’s not a cult course therefore it’s not sort of just been iterated around a sort of golden age layout it is
a it is a much more recent layout don’t tell me cult laid out of course and hordback
yeah amazing yeah and then they’ll have to sell it I think I was hitting that scolding
scolding hot a tone out on the side of eight or so six or whatever it was at the time but um yeah yeah so everyone’s just seen
that strike of it they well actually there was a Nord bike course that was built by Harry did anyone see that shot of just it yeah
so it was a couple of miles down the road they sold it for apartment land and they they with the money moved to where
they are so Nord bike is the most uh most recently built on linksland in the Netherlands and probably will probably
remain that that way for a long time would be my gas even though you could put about 30 courses uh next door now
for Donald Trump’s going to come in and just try it you know you wouldn’t get it done I mean
look we’re I’m dancing around this topic here um it is a newer routing therefore you
kind of go through I would say the challenges that are you go away from the house and go right up to the top and
then work your way back down after nine and then you repeat that same exercise again I think partly to the that’s
partly where the the feeling of like it felt like quite a long walk it was the second round of the day and you have to
it’s quite quite tricky land to try and scale isn’t it that that sort of out and
back twice um it’s out and back and out and up yeah yeah I’d say the fifth and probably the
13th are probably like the highest points on the course yeah and that created for me like a few like feelings
of like and fatigue you’ve got cameras you’ve got 14 clubs it’s like oh God you’re playing back again most stuff long
um but I think the quality I’d look at it was the greatest was like the individual Merit of each of the golf
holes but because of some of the maybe some of the walk in and some of the walks
between the holes broke that up when I looked back at it in hindsight I’m like yeah the quality of the individual golf
holes is extremely high yeah yeah it just didn’t flow which quite as well as
somewhere like a Japan or or a canamar even and I think that’s something that you just see quite commonly with with
more recently built courses is it’s the focuses on can I make the best 18 individual holes maybe less time on the
flow of it but that is something that as far as we’re aware you know they’ve got a master plan if they can
get things through with the environment agency and local government um and the work they’re doing with um
McKenzie and Ebert they’ve got some really exciting plans on them it’s a great golf course but if they can
if they can execute like the the plans that they want to do and really kind of
do that now to do that there does require I think a lot of consultation with environmental groups
um you know people on sustainability committee governments you know and when you play with Martin you realize just
the the sheer passion love intensity for the place for the local environment for
the stuff you know he’s like I’ve pretty much spend all Friday here and I meet with different ecologists and we work through exactly how we’re going to do
things right down to like a molecular level with that golf course on a bloody big site it’s like with 1400 members as
well I can seriously like to have people like England or who we met afterwards the club manager like we’re going to talk about how I’m sure but yeah and
Martin you’re like wow that’s really impressive um and we met Richard as well of course manager from yeah Richard Wing shout out
to him where’s he promises like Sheffield Sheffield yeah crazy he he watched the skankiest par of mine up
nine I think I’ve ever ever had that was in to win that par five where I
basically duffed a driver duffed a driver off the deck hit a drive off the deck to Within
20 foot short and then lagged it to about a foot tapped in the Box
I felt like about as long as a fortnight didn’t it I think some of those some of
the golf holes though are just serious bangers like you get a pretty good sense for it for for I think the first three
holes kind of capture for me everything that you kind of get
for nordvike in the last 15 in some ways so you know one’s this like quirky short
four where some absurd reason you’ve got a driving range which is just be on the landing Zone in the driving Zone yeah
it’s a pretty nice golf hole um but it’s like you know you’re like oh crikey yeah I can see like maybe there’s
going to be some work that they do that’s like the whole one is like oh okay maybe they’re gonna move the driving range you know you just get the
sense that they’re like oh there’s a few little rooting things here they’re going to think about then you play hole too and you’re like bloody hell this land is
about as crazy as I’ve ever seen like you play this this long par five stretches out from the dunes where you
tee off you know you you can Journey didn’t it you felt like you’re going on a journey on that one hole
you’ve got to hit two really good shots to kind of be at the Apex just to scale that huge and then you’ve kind of got
another Little Valley you’ve got to get through to the green and the green and everything so so all of that there is
like my God the land is Magnificent the natural landscape and that that hole as well I felt showed off as much
of the brilliant landscape you could see you could look back at the clubhouse you could see how it’s the distance and then for me hole three was just a brilliant
par three where you could see some of the push-up green stuff that they’ve done so when they built some of that I think they
they had the Great Links then there’s this huge rolling terrain and they’re sort of like pushed up pushed up to like
sort of heavier Earth into some of the green sites you’ve got a massive contouring within the middle of the green which is quite a big feature I’d
say the boldness of those greens was pretty I’d probably pretty severeign
I’m not gonna do this for the whole round but then four is the first one you get through the pine trees you know you
play that uphill part four with short dog legs right and then you’ve yeah you know trees on the right so there’s four
you’re like yeah okay I I think I’m falling on this yeah a lot of the a lot of the the variants you’re gonna get at
um by the fifth two you’ve got a flavor of exactly what’s to come for the rest of the round you’ve got like and just to
think about that four holes you’ve been exposed to a hell of a lot there quite quick yeah there’s a lot of areas it’s a massive massive assault to this
definitely the windiest we played as well I mean the third hole in particular when that pin was shoved over on the right just on a sort of kind of little
precipice where the slopes either side that funnel the ball away from the green um or off the green I should say and we
have the wind coming in off the right so it’s asking you to try and hit something left to right to try and hold it up or
start something over the crap on the right it was it was good playing it in proper linksy conditions yeah it was the
most linksy course I think we played yeah in terms of the the thing but should we talk about the um
the the bad day the green keeper must have had well I was I was thinking in my head the pins because that part three
was again a an early introduction up on that precipice and I I went about 20
feet long I gave it a good wrap that putt so I was to blame but then you had a pretty good putt top and you were like
nowhere to be seen and then I only when I had to return one I was like you could be here for a week and you
could not hold out on the screen like this part that’s a joke I part that house some of those
no we’ve been too polite at that stage I think me also told me we had a driver on the nine 16 and 17 were the most
barbaric we hadn’t we hadn’t seen those by the time we saw him but 17 was a joke actually 17 is the worst pin I have ever
seen in my life I’ve never done one of those days
have you seen those green keeper Revenge things they do when they’ll go out and they’ll put like sand rakes and stuff
around the pin and stuff at certain clubs I’ve never played in one of those but so for Content 17 would qualify we
played a good little match didn’t we we kind of got into a rhythm of playing foursomes from probably 10 onwards or so
maybe 11 onwards uh Sam and I are playing against Martin our host and Tom
and uh it was good like it was a close match back and forth there wasn’t much in it and I think we got to the 17th
hole one down and obviously he said well obviously it’s a long
par three probably playing about 190 yards into the teeth with a big fall off
it’s a little slope to the right yeah tiny bit uphill um I think we had the honor I did like a
you know probably a just a really solid five iron that sort of started left to the green didn’t want to go anywhere
near that pin scent of the green just kind of trundled off a little bit left half 35 feet away or something like that
and Sam’s got over this putt and the pin is cut probably there’s no more to three
feet away from the slope the false front yeah the false 20 feet is like 20 feet
runs down 20 feet below the level of the green and funnels the ball off another 10 yards 15 yards away from the green
and that’s where I think Martin missed it you did you put it up from there from down there you put it up from there to
like 15 feet which is an amazing part you’ve like taking a full swing with a Putter and managed to get it up to 15
feet and Sam’s just looking over this 35 40 foot which is but it
[Music] 20 yards away yeah yeah yeah
we just couldn’t get back here it turned out that Martin’s um pretty much the most celebrated Dutch
amateur golfer as well in the country’s history as well just behind Baron yeah so it’s like we’re
clipping our way through we’re ticking off Elite Dutch amateurs not course there we’re ticking off Elite amateurs
um I I nordvike was just
such a heavy walk that I think after after around in the morning and being like the fourth day now of the tour
like our listeners to this podcast I’ll probably by now feeling somewhat lethargic yeah feeling like okay this is
a two-parter otherwise they’re broken it’s got to be a two part of this otherwise only I think about a hundred
thousand bands would actually get through this this long now um it was it was crazy so it was it was a
real tough tough walking course um but I mean the spread
great little spread after got to meet ingerborg to be the uh Club manager um and spend a bit more time with her
and Martin she was a fierce character great so great official yeah in the tour rules officially what is the story uh
she called her yeah we’re not gonna tell the story though because I think that um there was a an outcome that wasn’t so
favorable but she had some great stories if you want to hear that story
because it’s a cool story there which We’re not gonna we’re not no she’s great Clubhouse
back and it had that like Upstairs Lounge with these like really cool like
patterned you know big bold white and blue stripe sort of deck chair wasn’t deck chairs but like patio air outside I
was like this is lovely I think panoramic glass because the sun was setting over like over the sea it was
just like oh very cool beautiful cool I really enjoyed Nord bike but you know it’s like
I said with the camera stuff with hindsight I would have happily out of out of I I
to me it wouldn’t have mattered playing Kenner nordvike but I felt like actually we pushed too much into itinerary if
there’s a recommendation from this pod it’s 100 to go on tour in Holland like you’ve got to do it do one a day though
but don’t but don’t don’t replicate that if if someone wants to Summer yeah maybe around the summer but even then I think
you’d be fatigued and you’d want to do 27 at kanama and you might just want to hang Northern like you might want to
just you know kind of go out and play a few holes under some sunset or whatever I just wouldn’t do them both in a day I
actually don’t think you can go too far wrong with whichever one you picked either no not at all
that’s what I’m saying right if that was a forecast it would still be waxing lyrical yeah and what
you have to make sure you do because the other thing that will be on your mind is going to The Hague and actually soaking
up some of the great culture and and food and and bars that’s available at
these incredible cities I mean the Hague was just incredible wasn’t it yeah yeah
we went from we haven’t got to the golf course yet but seeing as we’ve gone into painstaking detail and everything that
we’ve everything that we’ve drunk and eaten on this trip it would be rude to to not mention the meal that we had or
the evening we had with with a Villain at the Hague after nordvite so I think we left left there around about 5 45 6
o’clock something like that yeah at a reasonable time because of the learning stuff but then when in like half an hour
thinking to den hog checked into potato you faffed around did you use your thing rung everyone in your phone book for 20
minutes we’ve stood outside waiting we all presented it was a joke and then I eventually had to go inside and bring your room and say Bruce this is a bit
rude and then we came and met villain and we had a villain again just lovely straight in lovely Continental Vibe
cobbled streets people sat outside um you know just every Bistro is packed
you’re like I wouldn’t call it a bistro is bistro the right my nose one the main picture is more tapasy wasn’t it this
place but the bistro is the only thing that’s coming to the monster right but it was that I thought Madeleine’s was a
great meal is French is an evening in Den hug I mean look we’re going to talk about food and stuff but like sitting
down and Willem gave us a load on like um Dutch custom didn’t they just customs and like cultural stuff yeah and then
took us for a tour like a walking tour around the city oh after the meal yeah yeah I vividly remember Sam just saying
oh I mean yeah it’s just another great great City this is where the UK has just
it with like globalization like the loss of the High Street such a shame
so I mean villain took us around Den hog is I know we’ll go for a little walk so he walked out to this square like I
think it’s called like the French park or something like the French street because it’s got shades of like a sort of Parisian walkway and then and before
we sort of went over and sort of walked around some of the canals and stuff and you look at it and you’re like yeah
there’s some lovely government buildings there but there’s nice independent stuff independent restaurants like if this was
in Britain I’d just be staring at yet another Primark and it was like oh you know do you know what thank God
you know that they’re not you know done that here it was just a and also there’s
a reflection on people that want to kind of give you a walking tour and show you around the
city if someone came to Birmingham I would just try and get a stab pretty fast on them and get them so that’s not good
it’s like you know he’s like Blackwell we’ll go into birming as well for a little culture people did that recently
at the foursomes didn’t they were going to go out in Birmingham and it’s like you’ve lost the bloody plot just get
back to the Premier Inn get your head down six hours we’ll do it again yeah we should have a gorgeous meal and um I
suppose one of the highlights of the evening for me was after we had our mail Venom was quite Keen to show us the walking tour and we got get another beer
and you know when you walk into a pub and you absolutely know you shouldn’t be
there but you’re already in by that points you’re like well I’m committed if I turn down when you walk in to a pub
that solely um inhabited by people there are at
least half your age in fancy dress that was that was a big one for them they were wearing togas weren’t they
yeah he was always taking us there it was like a great place I think it’s because it was on the canal or something but it was like no you’re not coming in
yeah well I was stood in there I was like yeah I think there’s something wrong
here just a really I just remember that being a lovely nice evening I thought the the food that we had there that was
just just like knock out like I I’d only I don’t eat Sashimi let’s not go to for me on the menu and I was like yeah this
had so much of it I think you had mercury poisoning when you played the next day that gout really impaired my
performance with that maybe they offset one that might have been it but then we stayed at this place um Vasa
because the area which is just outside Denmark so if you are going there and playing Den hard it is the perfect place
to stay because it was literally five minutes in the car in the morning and it was a dead easy Blitz into there so just
a bit of helpful travel tip next morning at Royal Hague is it Royal Hague or is it well
yeah move out there isn’t it sounded like you pulled out of that one in the house no so we should cover the main picture
to use your phrase Bros around because all these places have s-c-h-e on the end of their names
and villain was one over dinner can you remember you better on this explanation I think no no I can’t remember this bit
you can you can’t just tell me I can I can’t so I think he said something like
previously in Dutch language the s h s c h e on the end of everything basically
was to say of somewhere so it was like Conan Clicker
which has just got way too many K’s and consonants in there to the Trashy spell
um it was essentially Royal of the Hague so the s-c-h-e at the end
of these things which has an Eindhoven Utrecht have it um Canada don’t nordvike I think do on
one of the spellings I’ve seen it’s basically sort of of that so you’ve got Colin Kika hargush
which is basically Royal Hague I think that works absolutely now I’ve got through that can
I have 10 minutes breather while he’s doing it blowing place yeah I don’t think I can say I’ve I’ve
been on golfing land like that it just it is
if kanama was full of drama um it like took all that drama and put
it on roids and then made you walk there’s no comparison so like you could make a
reachy example with kanama or you know what I mean or you could yeah I mean this is the oldest Dutch
Club but I think you know the cult layout there must have been sort of move around a bit because
it’s like there is flamboyance and there’s Flair and then this was just downright like
we’ve got to try and put some words around this because we’re sort of just you know yeah stretching for hyperboles
I would say I’ve never played a golf course that’s and I I’ve got no reference point to the Hague this is
good and bad but like I I would say I don’t have any reference point to it a reference point I would say for the
Hague in terms of to describe how you would walk it would be I would say shades of like and You’re
gonna laugh but like other Payne’s Wick or a cleave or a kingdom that it felt
like you were in a mountain no but there was such enormous undulation but stretched out but but not
over a mountain it was just within the hole so like it felt like I should have been at the top of a mountain by the end
of it but I was just where I started yeah you’re not going to get many even lies or any even lies or flat lies
you’re almost just playing I mean across massive caverns and then some into another reasonably
flat area and it’s just um it’s classified as a links I wouldn’t say yeah it has there’s some dunes and stuff
and you do definitely encounter bits of that land but it’s it’s so far from being anything you would normally
describe as a lynx course if you looked at East Coast Scottish links courses
like the first hole just to give an example from a species man I’m trying to try and say really apparently really
poorly but I would say the first hole is kind of a it’s a long part where it’s short part five but it’s the long hole
straight down you must drop 25 to 30 meters roughly elevation change from T to green and the
second hole is almost the complete reverse of that where you basically scale back up that so you’re back where
you start but you almost go 50 meters down then 50 meters up then another 30 meters up there’s this huge collection
area yeah so then yeah the third hole which you then kind of where you just started on the first is a t-box t-box
there you play to a green which is probably a five or ten meters above you but you’ve got to go over a huge Valley
like massively you have to walk um and you play it a little bit below you
and then you play back up the hill and then four is 220 plunging downhill another enormous drop downhill and it’s
just like the most severe topography I I don’t think it would be possible to
root a golf course now on anything that’s that’s more undulating than that yeah let’s let’s dive into the history
because it is quite an interesting one really I think um although although the Corning clicker
has uh however you want to pronounce it Royal hay golf club was founded back in
the last decade of the 19th century they weren’t playing golf on that site
they were playing golf um I think probably you know somewhere else around the Hague and that site was
actually built by Colt Allison and Morrison in the 30s I believe for a Jewish
businessman very very successful wealthy man that Clubhouse I believe was it was
sort of his country home or maybe it was just his actual home I’m not quite sure
um and he then fled the Netherlands I think presumably sense of foreboding
about um maybe the coming sort of Nazi uh occupation and so on
um and then Royal hay Golf Club took over the course that had been laid out I think mostly by Alison I think Holt and
Allison were working together at that time but it was uh yeah so Morrison was doing a
lot of the work as well so they refinished some are helping Colton I think particularly with the last stage
is a Colt’s career like he’s not traveling to the Netherlands he’s not getting KLM refunds every every 15
minutes an incredible story um Vellum took us up into there wasn’t
an archivering but there was a room with lots of archive photographs that we that we looked at after the round
and it raw egg now is very green it’s it’s
perfectly manicured exactly it’s probably the most manicured the courses we played I I would say and all
surrounding was was verdant yeah yeah there were Dunes around and stuff but they were all very grass covered they
were verdant yeah whereas you look back at these old photographs of some of these holes and it looked exactly how
nordvike looked which was broken [Music] it was just little patches of grass they
put greens and patches of grass they’d put teas and it was like it looked like islands of grass whereas
it’s obviously changed a lot over the years but it did have a very ignored like feel originally and Richard who was
with us gave a quite a protracted story I thought about some some changes in the atmosphere to do with cows and all sorts
of stuff I’m not even going to try to have a chemical engineer he’s bright blue IQ of about 400 I mean I was just I was
not I wasn’t following it you know but he did steer me well on having the meatballs for lunch it’s just like a Dutch specialty which yeah he just he
was English as well Scottish actually you’d hate to be referred to as English if you are
listening to this you know I’ve managed to correct Sam’s 100 out of that one
Scott Smith’s slip of the tongue um anyway he knew that that was not going
to be the ticket for me and uh steered me well but he gave some explanation about it when you looked at those photos
though the holes looked all well almost unrecognizable fourth playing
downhill just the most long you know long drop shot three that you could
imagine with sand everywhere wasn’t it and he’s just like it must have been Contender for the best hole in the bloody World
clubs as well you know this hole’s at 230 yards yeah oh you’re gonna plug a sort of clique in the face of a bunker
and then try and get some spoony on the back of it it’s like how on Earth is that I think you’ve got a clique of sort
of wood yeah it click clicks a long iron um yeah um we’ll edit that out no no right
actually and so I think we should try and just talk about some of the holes to try and bring this to life because I
think one and two is fine stuff yeah but I think if you looked at holes like
um I’m gonna say like six seven eight nine has been a fairly good epitome of
of the egg wild elevation change unbelievably
challenging certainly we were playing from the back tees again which was you know it’s a long course off the backs
anyway but coupled with elevation change means it plays significantly further than the yardage does it feedback
Fairways as well there’s there’s huge fronts to the greens and huge runoffs like it’s some
of the bigger some of the ones at nordvike it really demanding like I I remember
hitting shots that were of the of the finest order that I can hit the golf ball and I couldn’t get on putting
surfaces for holes the holes in the run and I was like you know that wasn’t the best you hit all toys like I I posted I
probably posted a half decent number at Eindhoven but hey girl’s like I think I’d have been fighting to break mid 80s
like and I was no probably I did probably but I actually shot 79 because I canceled it
all up I’m naturally but I I I remember hitting shots and just thinking
Jesus this is penalt this is really tough we were stood on
um the fourth T in fact with our host villain and um we were talking about the
choice of teas now you know you can go back quite a bit on some of these white tees and he said yeah you know I I
play off three off the yellow course I get four shots off the white course I get 10. that’s like Christ like he’s
like yeah it’s like six shots difference for me plays off like a whs of three so
it’s tough yeah but then where do you go beyond tough well you know we’ve already said monster
elevation change I’d say the greens are you know if if Eindhoven have these
wonderfully understated Charming um cult green sites Hague has these kind
of they’re they’re almost on steroids you know they are so beefed up with the with
the runoffs and it’s so potent yeah it’s like we played that first it would have
been almost over facing playing well yeah I think they were in in The Hague
there were it was for me it was definitely a course did that you had to know before you
played it there were bits of the greens that you had to go for and there were bits of the fairways you had to go for
you could be on you could be on The Fairway but on the wrong side completely like no shot or
you know you could you could put yourself in onto a green that I mean
there was a couple of greens that you got on I think 10 11 might have been one of them that powerful that you got on is
that it is it’s it’s a man from here oh yeah there’s quite a few
spots where he missed it and like I was playing with um with willem’s brother
yeah like didn’t tell me but I kind of clocked onto it and uh he was wearing
like um um ngf logo top like Netherlands golf
Federation or something but turned out to be highly decorated senior amateur Champion or or Netherlands golf team
member as well yeah surprise shot
um well no he was like six foot two I think
as well yeah yeah he was yeah yeah so Richard was not only
Scottish he was also comfortably over six foot but you know other than insults even those two ways and uh yeah well he
was also a great player too um definitely a great player yeah but they said they said that like on a couple of cases they’re like yeah we just don’t
see people get up and down from that spot very often at all like you know that run off there you’d be better off
rather than flirting with the because there’s a few pins that give you an insight into until like if you’re trying to take on a pin that looks fairly
benign from back in the Fairway you get up there and be like they’d be like no this is left side of the green or even just bail out
a little bit left all day because there’s a much easier up and down from there it felt you know because I’m
consciously said oh it’s crazy it’s like golfing we’ve got to bring it to life from the absolute Tippy tips and that
was you know I I hope you’ve caught some Drone footage that has the most spectacular golf hole but I I you know
you’ve you it’s one of those where when the strength of the hole is in the T to
Green you know the last thing you’re thinking when you’ve button drive a four iron pin
eyes like oh my God we’ve got an enormously dramatic green side where I’m pin high and I’ve got nearly no chance
of a fall still here you know villum’s openly saying this is really a five foot one place it as a five to be fair then
there wasn’t there there was quite a bit of not senior ball finish there wasn’t many blind dries but then Seven’s that
kind of seven years seven was a great driving hole over this June and the post and then you could go down you could go down
six if you wanted to like that’s something you because because I was kind of drowning around that time and you could see that six and seven were very
very generous actually but you just can’t see that from the T like they’ve got kind of a connective Fairway
um sit and they kind of come back on themselves so you could it it is it’s
one of those really good things you get in architecture where it’s it’s very deceptive from the team yeah like yeah I
can’t but it’s not strategic because you know it’s definitely penal like you know that hole is you’ve got to step up and
execute a really good drive over very long way to get over there just because of the yardage yeah if we’d have played
it further forward it would have become more strategic I agree I agree um
look at the makeup of the green then you have that quite severe Bank left you’ve got this little plectrum of Doom thing
going on short left and off the back right of the green you disappear into the you know the complete Abyss like it
it really is demanding shot qualities of the highest order someone I’m pretty
sure we played villains you know he said somebody had shot 65 around there or something off the backs recently which
there was no wind when we played it and I got the sense they could tuck the pins much harder if they tried so 65 on any
day there off the backs is a is a performance of a different order and I thought you know what I liked
about it though we had a friend who went out and played
all these courses actually for a few weeks um before a couple of months before we went out and he sort of said yeah hey quite
an exacting test maybe you touched two penal for his liking and I was kind of expecting that maybe going in
and I thought it was demanding but actually I felt that it was it was pretty generous in places or most for
the most part off the tee and then the the sort of demanding nature of it was the approach shots I hate the expression
it’s a second shot golf course but it kind of is true with somewhere like the hey where if you could miss it in the
right spots you could you could make a decent score around there it was just like you could have runoffs and you
weren’t losing your ball and stuff like that but you hit runoff areas around by The Greenway you just weren’t getting up and down if you’re getting too cute you
could make a double um and I think that’s a pre-playable golf course it’s difficult to score around
but at least you’re in the hole yeah you’re in the hole and you’ll make yourself look like a bit of an idiot up by the green there were a couple of
holes on the back line Maybe 14 and 15. you’re right in it yeah
and at 18 actually was was a second
um but yeah yeah I think you know it was I really enjoyed it because you know as
I said mentioned earlier playing with Peter like Dutch Champion or kind of in the Dutch Senior Team really really
competitive player and then and then Rich as well um you know really solid two handicap I
think he said he was look look better than that he was you know rips it on the way around and they’re like right we’re gonna play four two zero I’ll have a
good competitive game and so actually that was probably one of the the rounds in the trip where I kind of like focused
in was like right I’m gonna just try and you know put together a score here and and give these guys a half decent game
and the Hague is almost like the perfect examination of that in a way I think I
think it was hands down the most difficult of course we played yes I would say the heck was very few easy
like if you take a holder I suppose on you know just sheer difficulty ranking
I’m not gonna say stroke index but you know if you rank the difficulty that I would say 13 is a I’d say it’s a
moderate hold the Hague it’s certain by no means one of the toughest um possibly one of the easier ones I’ve
out of all of them and you look to where they could put the pin and we walked past it when we played the 11th and
billum said oh good I’m glad they got the pin there he says God when they put it at the back I mean it’s playing it’s playing at
between a half a shot and I shot hard Russell bollocks I mean it’s 20 yards like can’t be any different you get up
on the green you realize it’s about four yards wide and there is a ridge that’s about an inch wide otherwise yeah even
if you’re putting from the front of the green you are totally and utterly snooker like it it is peeling around the
greens but I would agree to you to your point and you’re spot on because when when you say penal you think oh God am I
going to be walking golf holes if I’m not if I’m not driving it like round that day or whatever you’re definitely
not you’re not losing golf balls yeah I could attest to that because this was
sixth round of tour if we include rye and um I was my swing was held together by Solitaire you’re mutilated you were
mutilating the golf ball you were you were being mean I was absolutely swinging just absolutely it had gone at
that point and like I couldn’t I just couldn’t keep the ball on the planet but I didn’t the only ball I lost weirdly
was when I flushed one pin High left on seven I think it was and it literally just vanished yeah
but apart from that I played a bit like an idiot um but never really lost a ball and like
you say when you’re not when you’re not hitting the ball well around there you’re just going to be showing up I think I’ve
never seen a course where you you get there to that caddy Hut because the clubhouse is on the lower land and you
never really we went straight to the caddy Hut where they do little coffees and do a sandwich and you watch people
tee off and it’s the high point of the course this is worth painting a bit of a picture really is when we drive in so so
you it’s very Grand drive through and everything you’ve got the driving sort of range and stuff there but then you
walk up this steeple and you get to this little caddy Hut with the lovely little Heron logo which is you know part of the
sort of club’s identity and and it’s just lovely and you look out and the first time and
you think I have usually you can make some shapes out of the holes like at the very least you’re looking and going
we’ve got a vague idea these holes go there and there and oh I wonder when we go out there this was an assortment of
greens and I was like I’ve got no idea where those greens are played from or where like it’s just and I think I’ll
pick it up I bet that’s in the Drone footage you can just be like wow like you’ll see how bold this thing is with
greens just propped up here and stuff um I’ve got the perfect term for it actually it’s not a term that I’ve
certainly certainly not pressing releases or transition no but it is from that part of the world shoot McComb
Castle Stewart little shout out to him when he was um showing us around there negative space
because when you get to that First Tee Box up by the caddy Hut on the and hey you kind of summited that path from the
car park and you look out and you’re like oh my word as you say something you can see holes in the distance and
certain green sites but there’s like crashing sort of vast expanses like below it in sort of a negative space
that that you’re like oh what’s down there and there’s a lot of that you can obviously see the high points you should do more podcasts just so good when you
come alive like absolutely I wish we could get Bruce on the Pod movie ridiculous take
because this is just stupid but I hope the pause already two and a half hours into the pot so let’s just um go for it
now I wonder if even if you can get where I’m going with this I can’t
believe it’s the first tea oh we’re gonna go cross-country golfers thirsty
shades of Saint Andrews old now in that okay yes you’ve got to guard you
I mean this is you want a hill to climb here yeah you can’t see it was because like like you say so you look down this
not there’s no real rough to speak of in the whole Golf Course really not like anything that’s going to be a problem
you’re looking down you’re on probably the highest point of the golf course you’ve got the second holes on your
right see the ninth holes on your left and you’re looking down the first it’s a really long hole but there is
literally the whole world to aim at and it’s almost like you can’t pick a point it’s
like I don’t know where to hit him intimidating it’s an
intimidating shop because it’s like there’s so many places I can go which one do I yeah the danger of shoehorning
these kind of takes to the back end of what will probably be quite a long podcast is that the few hardened
listeners have reached this point have now lost all respect for us so we may have you may have buried the job no I
know what you’re saying but I’d say there’s a big difference in that when you go to Saint Andrews and you
step on that First Tee you’re like wow okay there’s a lot to aim at that down there where do I kind of pick my target
but it’s the dead flat piece of ground and you know you can see the ball land and you know you’ve got to keep it between yeah you know Links Road on the
left and the beach on the right but hey it’s like I’m hitting this and I’m not gonna see it land yeah is it all
right over there all right let’s suppose where I’m going with it it’s almost intimidating in its generosity
I don’t know if it’s generous because he’s like the unknown I I almost think it’s like you’re on the moon and you’re
gonna try and jump over the edge of it I feel like the Indiana Jones you know Last Crusade thing where he steps off
the rock thing again didn’t it it didn’t feel like a it felt like a pretty perilous opening t-shirt and you got
down there you’re like okay there’s a bit of room to play with here but but while we’re standing we’ve got to talk
about the 80s because on the 18th we because it’s just got to be talked about I mean
uh I to give to give this a tiny bit of context Sam and I played with villain
behind um Bruce Richard and Peter um Bruce the 17th and 18th tee boxes is
kind of a weird Quirk to the Hague is it almost right next to each other and you
play a short par three and you kind of walk back to where you’ve just hit which isn’t isn’t brilliant in terms of but
only the metal tea though but we were we were playing at 580 yards or something yeah yeah yeah yeah but
um so you play this par three and you kind of walk back and then play the par five to finish
um samud had heard Bruce he played his T-shirt and then sort of jumped across to Bruce to see him so you’d seen the
whole I thought she found the only long grass on the course that I was wading throughout so I was gonna get lost in the reads between the teeth yeah
um so I played the whole traditionally case driven all the way up from Eindhoven
just to see us on the 17th and 18th and have a spot of lunch before us before we left which was incredibly thoughtful but
I saw him on the 17th green we’d have a little chat put out walk back to the 18th and I mean Sam’s
band a tree of words it’s it’s just gross most of the time but this reveal
when you stand on the 18th t or you emerge onto the 18th T at the Hague I
genuinely just started laughing and I must have laughed for almost a minute a weird Behavior because you’re up there
what feels like a thousand feet above sea level yeah and you’re just looking out at this sliver of Fairway it’s a bit
more generous when you get down there but not much sort of Sandy scrape up the left where it looks like a little finely
ball yeah right just looks like the end of the world like there’s just an infinite Forest down there and then
perched up in the distance looks like a thousand yards away is this amazing Clubhouse
not seen it up until now it’s the first video you should get of it it’s got a pretty amazing sort of symmetry to it
really in a way and then the sort of nice thatched roof that’s the Hallmark of the clubhouses in Holland
um and kind of split out with the sort of Terrace out that out the back where or at the front I guess from where
you’re seeing it um where we ended up having lunch and yeah opposite of the 18th hole at Prestwick
which is just a very gentle warm down you know here’s a good come on in the water’s lovely we’re coming in the
water’s lovely you you are bruised by the time you get to the 18th T and it’s
like see your day is not done yet yeah it’s just like here it is like a mirage yes
you’re going to come in here and have a wonderful time yeah you’re literally like that sort of the pathetic sort of thirsty man in the desert and the Oasis
is just a little bit Out Of Reach and it’s like you got to just navigate but it is and you read the rewards
I have never been so breathtaken or breath tooken breath taketh
like I’ve seen a more stunning golf hole but I think it was a brilliant fitting
to the end of the tour as well like it really was wasn’t it you know I mean yeah I know I I’d like to argue on it
because I like I know you boys think he was probably overly difficult that golf hole
um actually I thought it was it was it was quite uh quite a tricky closing Hole uh
yeah I’d like it a bit too penal yeah let’s not forget the course is book ended with part five so you know and but
I do think tough golf courses kind of demand a tough closing hole otherwise doesn’t make any sense with it you know
and it’s you know it’s strategic but but you know get yourself to a lot of bother around
there so you’re kind of expecting it to be tough as Nails um
it just feels very tight off the tear I think that would be my only observation if you if you have had a tough day and
you’ve got the rights going you know you are just getting to the 18th thinking I
could have to walk 600 yards there yeah I yeah my comment about it feels like fairly generous off the tee and it’s
penal you look like a new around the greens applies it doesn’t apply as much I’d say
to the 18 that is pretty hard analysis I don’t know if you remember coming up to me when I was when I was about to tee
off you were like hyperventilating you like you you like this is this is really tight this is pretty tight yeah yeah total commitment
total commitment I’ve got to hit this with total commitment yeah just run at it Almighty slotted that drive to be
fair though didn’t I but it’s tough like I mean I seem to remember hitting the gray no comment I thought I thought he
was going to give me a lease yeah yeah no no I um
I I but like I I birdied the last hole of tour didn’t we Tom yeah we did that’s cool unbelievable there was a lot of
birdies on that tour like we should we should add there was a lot of birdies it was some good golfers golf but like you
know it’s variant yeah of course this is just crashing deviant crashing lows but
manic eyes um a couple of threads to tie this
monstrosity of a podcast to a close that we whilst we’re on here we must have walked by
the flow of the itinerary and how we did it we’ve obviously noting the 36 whole
day has been maybe a bit too much in a day my take would be that the flow of what
we did of going Eindhoven first whether you flew in and used the travel day to drive south and do Eindhoven and then
come back up and play some of your stuff up there or if you were driving up through the south of the country worked well not for any other yes it was
convenient but I felt like the order we played the courses in meant there was a gentle increase in the severity and the
potency of the courses potency has been a good like they got
increasingly better but I would say every single course we played felt more
wild and dramatic than the one we’d played before because I think you’ve got to separate
out the the heathland Eindhoven and Japan they’re very different species to
the kanama nordvike hay I think you could the broadly speak in those those
three I’d agree with that that’s a different style of golf and I don’t know if it’s a fair comparison between those
and the pan and yeah I’d agree with that but I also think um
if you’d have played the Hague in this order The Hague nordvike kanama
I don’t think I would have walked away from Canada thinking that’s got loads of drama and that’s really yeah because it
does have loads of drama but it’s less undulating and severe than the Hague
whereas I walked away from camera going oh God that’s like shades of Burke drama and stuff and perhaps I wouldn’t have
thought that if I’ve just seen like the the Himalayas in The Hague so perhaps
completely by accident Maybe by design that that it we did get it that way
but I don’t think you can get it wrong no I mean they were so different as well like I think you know the the courses
every single one we played was I can’t stress how different they were I really thought that Eindhoven Japan were going
to be very similar I really thought it was going to be quite tough to see a big difference between hey kanama nordvag
people who watch the films in the output of this tour be like well now I look at that you were mad well that’s obvious
but there’s not that much stuff out there on these places so I really couldn’t believe the variants
and I think when you go on a tour like that that’s kind of what you want yeah I think we all maybe you to a lesser
extent Sam because you’d obviously put in a lot of the hard yards organizing it and reading up on the history more so
than Tom and I did prior to going on tour but um speaking about for myself I certainly
felt like I went in with expectations because how could you not if you’re interested in Golf Course architecture in Golf Course history and you want to
go and you have a true passion for going to seeing these different clubs and cultures in the game and the courses and
and understanding how someone like Colt honed his craft and and went on to to build these amazing courses we’ll lay
them out I should say um you have expectation going somewhere like the Netherlands because you know
that you might not hear about it on Sky Sports or you know mainstream golf media but if you are interested in
architecture you’ll have heard about it and yet expectations are still exceeded on every level because
that is just fundamentally the beauty of the game isn’t it in the sport that we play and going somewhere I think as well
that is a different culture you know the the culture of the Netherlands is just very very different to to that in the UK
even taking into account the little sort of discrepancies between England and Scotland and Ireland and so on
it was just really really refreshing and eye-opening tour on so many levels you know golf culture
um maybe we’ll travel to different places more with the game yeah it made me want to go see Germany yeah
I’ve now got a I’ve got a more of an Inc like a desire to go to
sort of Belgium Germany I know obviously people talk about let’s go and hunt out some old stuff in Spain you know like
say go and seeing stuff in Germany go and seeing stuff like Australia or something yeah yeah like he makes you
want to be like the the golf coupled with a different culture
it’s just it’s just too easy though isn’t it like you go to Scotland you know exactly what you’re getting the
history the courses they’re all amazing it’s lower than five it’s just like you know you’re in for bang after Banger
it’s just like it’s all there on a plate for you whereas I feel like you’ve had
to put on a bit of work here this is not like this hasn’t come easy um no they don’t really take visitors
and guess yeah this is worth covering so I all of the
clubs that we’ve visited as part of this film series do accept visitors they have different rules around it like they’ll they might have limited amounts or
certain days most of them I think you know these are not places you will just book online you will need to send an
email to the secretary you know you will probably you know absolutely need to behave yourself when you’re there and be
respectful of yeah no no but like you need to be respect that you know massively enhanced our experience being
hosted by five world-class Dutch Legends but you know playing with local members
was obviously a wonderful experience but you go you’ve got to be mindful these are members clubs and they they orientate themselves around the members
they are there to serve the members which as you say active and playing and they’re using the course but they will
receive them they are not cheap to play but they are by no means anything like the kind of the upper echelon of
Scottish and Irish and and an open road to kind of kind of money they’re not in the same order
so so they can be done you know I think yeah it’s not as user friendly as a trip
because you know we’ve got to be really careful who had so many great times out of Scotland but it couldn’t be further from the golf tour because you have got
to do a bit more leg work on you know looking at cities you want to stay and thinking about the drives between which
was some of the great times was the times in the car um but I think if you if you’ve done
some sampling of Scottish courses but or sampling of some Irish courses and you
feel like or English you feel like oh well I suppose I haven’t done X Y and Z and I need to take them off
that probably tells you now the time to start looking at somewhere different be it going and playing a ton of stuff in
France or you know how I’ll say like you know stuff like you know the interesting travel stuff that they’re laying up have done with Sweden and Denmark and stuff
or the Dutch stuff you know it’s it’s like you know broaden broaden the
horizons a little bit doesn’t mean you’ve got to go and tee up a ball on the you know the North Pole or anything that’s stupid you know there’s there’s
grades of this but and it’s quite close by it’s pretty convenient to get to it’s absurdish we decided a week and a half
beforehand that we were going to totally change our travel plans and go by car
turned out to be the best decision we probably could have made of the whole tour because we had shitloads of camera yeah if we just had a nodder with your
golf clubs in you yeah like a 45 minute flight from the UK or whatever it is and it’s like you can get I mean you can get
an overnight ferry from Newcastle or I think like Norwich or Ipswich one of those has got an overnight Ferry where
you can just get there brilliant got a cabin blob in there sleep on by there get your head down here basically in Canada it’s like such
nice people as well and then that you know yeah I hope I’m hoping it comes through because I feel like I need to
explicitly say how lucky I’d feel to have done what we’ve done absolutely yeah you know you know we are absolutely blessed and you know we really hope
everyone enjoys the content that comes hashtag blessed um no no we are these Dreadful Choice almost by me but but that but they’re
nice people very interesting what Willem said to us at dinner when he was like well you in terms of proximity we’re so
close to Belgium like I mean it’s it’s almost impossible to sort of divide you know to tell the line geographically if
you said culturally you know we’re miles apart from the Belgium like actually when you in terms of the humor and some
of the interpersonal stuff and they see there’s a massive Affinity with the Brits because there is a dry sarcastic
yeah tone to the to the humor so stuff just seems to just gel well you know like whenever I’ve been to Holland
Netherlands whatever it always just feel like your human I’m friends well they all speak like better English than we do
as well so you just turn up anywhere and whether it’s the guys come and helped us like replace the tire and he tracked or
you know some of the students who work behind the bar they wouldn’t check the tire stuff yeah
yeah and I kind of liked it I had a lot of respect yeah and William had a great
point in these he said yeah you know obviously there’s some sort of cultural Affinity with with the Brits and um but
even so you know I kind of I’ve got this sort of like little translation in my head of what what a Brit says and what
they actually mean and you know I know if I’m sort of telling telling a story in it you know I have a kind of British
audience and someone there just says oh that’s really interesting villain that’s really interesting I know what that actually means is stop telling
this story it’s really not that interesting let’s change the conversation and they’re as a result
they’re you know they’re quite direct I think they’re buying it what Peter was saying wasn’t it they’ve got this list
of things where they’ve got what a British person says what a British person means and what a Dutch person
thinks they mean and I think that was the yeah that’s interesting what British person says that’s interesting what a
British person means shut the up but what a Dutch person hears is oh that’s really interesting I’ll carry on yeah okay so they have to check
themselves yeah don’t put around that kind of language they’re like I’m
not interested I’m not interested in this conversation going really long yes absolutely um I think before before we we sort of I
mean I’m pretty sure we’ve touched all bases here on on what we need to do you hope so through nearly three hours into
yeah three hours with multiple films to come up we’ve got eclectic 18s we’ve got pods from some of these places we’re
going to do some editorial stuff you know we are we really want to bring this stuff to light and do it in a in a in a
tasteful way so I I think there’s much else left in the lockers there’s a few little bits the drive home I think
um if you’re gonna go on a a tour like we did uh don’t do it at half term that
was pretty going through the passport control at half term was it was a pickle that was a little bit Bleak he was in it
yeah the flexi plus couldn’t save I would like to say if anyone has made it through to this point there’s a few few
bits first of all I think you’ve got the point but we’re giving away a free tailor-made driver to
anyone who makes it this way just drop us an email no giveaway it’s like that
sort of experiment with the terms and conditions Anyone who reads to page 85 of these dense tncs
yeah I mean if you’ve got this far I’m sure you’re getting the point like it is 100 worth visit and if you if you get
the opportunity or you have you have the desire please please get in touch with some of these clubs and get out there
because it’s just the whole reason we started all this stuff is we love we want to share the love and I I really
want to be able to speak to people and be like how good is Japan yeah how good it is Canada how good it is nordvike and
you know have a chance to do it it would be a mess if we didn’t say another huge thank you individually to each
one of the people who hosted us or helped us or helped us
organize the trip like we wouldn’t have got it without it yeah so case Collard
Baron Van Damme we’re gonna go through Christian Boomer yeah Martin dalfa tree
Village steenberg and Peter Von steenberg as well and uh Richard Richard
white as well as Lucas from Canada amazing guys some people you meet along
the way that really kind of enrich these uh totally these experiences so don’t forget the uh the guy that watches
unpack all the respect I care on the um the shuttle they’re just staring us like
we had three heads just boxes of poor Joy stuff just go through blocks Jokes Aside you know it it is it is it was also not
free so you know the the joy of supporting us with this is is is well well
um appreciative I think and you know we are big fans of FootJoy you know it’s it’s the start of a good relationship
just a moment with the gloves gloves you’ve got to do some individual bits on this I don’t know if we can we can do it
justice the shoes the gloves the trousers like literally like I actually feel this
is proper against bran to do this but yeah the gloves were nice weren’t they gloves were great club’s great I love a
cabrato glove um the the premiers are just an outstanding shoe I’ve I’ve actually got to slow down this FootJoy fetish that
seems to be great at the moment so uh you’re actually yeah yeah it’s actually I’m getting carried away with at the moment going out and buying sort of Ages
collection right we are going to wrap it there if you’ve made it this far well done to you gold star just get in touch
with Bruce he’s going to send you a driver and Tom can I just close this by saying what a wonderful job you’ve done
on those films of every Faith there are going to be as beautiful if not more beautiful than he
made but you’ve basically got until year end now in the edit room by the time this comes out you will be
like Fed Up of feedback on films and and yeah just to really be the Cherry that
caps it off um you know there’s going to be a little bit of editing this pod as well which I think might be might be a little bit a
little bit challenging too but you know and I picked up attention round of the tour Bruce’s 68 to pun
oh yeah oh I ain’t got that that’s a horrible bit of pigeon holding at the end that was class that was the best
goal that was the finest probably some of the finest golf I’ve ever seen you play yeah I think so well that’s very
kind but absolutely not not warranted we’re here to talk about Dutch Golf and we hope you enjoyed it
sounds best around until we shot a 78 some point that was really good
thank you and good night adios