[Music]

I’m stuck your whole world since the beginning of cookie jar golf there have been ambitions the ambition to start a podcast the ambition to create films and the ambition to run events one ambition that has always been with us was to adventure to the Netherlands to play golf Netherlands is an abundance of stunning golf courses and there’s a landscape that’s been barely covered by the media this is the story of our trip [Music] right so a series I’m on camera okay the performance mode you stop monologuing I know it’s never put a camera on you is that monologuing there we go

fresh local dish

a half your time [Music] should we go

it’s Pro Shot

hoodies are right go up there and get changed immediately there’s people coming down for our listeners that perhaps do not know the link between Colt and rye obviously we’re going to go on to talk about what Colt did in the Netherlands shortly but for those of the people that don’t know the connection between cult and Rye a very old Harry cult he was a solicitor for many years and you know his first foray into golf course architecture came at Rye where the course was essentially founded they’d asked him to establish the links which he did but yeah rise absolutely where it started for him yeah and it remains just a brilliant test of golf a fascinating layout with plenty of intrigue and and uh just a joy to play and that’s where it all started from you know he laid that course out in 1894 and subsequently became their first honorary secretary so the links with with Ryan and Harry Colt Run Deep good fun though wasn’t it and it was a perfect start so this little thing with the rice mumpsy Ryan he played two balls so the idea is that you play six holes with two people playing as a foursome and the other one playing as their own ball and you play a match against each other and every time every six holes that alternates yeah so I played 13 14 and 15 and the light was fading and you boys were just on it and you’re like let’s just jump in the car and go let’s like it’s not the it would have been ridiculous like you just want to you just want to get as close to two don’t you because we’re due to be Eindhoven day one you know at like 11 or something so we were gonna have to be out of bed at like 4 30 a.m on some bloody train and then Anything Could Happen we’re gonna go to folkeston we are indeed but I like to think of any large undertaking is sort of like chopping down a tree you’ve got to spend 90 of the time sharpening the ax

on it so this is act sharply why he’s happy isn’t he I’m going to Ghent it’s meant against meant to be lovely though Roy Orbison wants saying about it you know

you know what Roy Orbison Drove all night

let’s go

enjoying playing a videography

[Music] it wouldn’t be green if we weren’t supposed to go in we’re gonna drive on some water carriage

I’m about one just give yourself a wide birthday Bruce

okay

and then then you go straighten up in there

oh my goodness

this is so tight

foreign

[Music] is worth 509. [Music] hi guys so I just thought I’d give you a little tour of the hotel room so we’re here in Ghent so here in Ghent it’s two in the morning oh look lights and Quan I took one really good all right what I love about these hotel rooms is they’ve got these really good bathrooms so

it’s really good I love it

[Music] [Music]

Roger that if we get stuck already we should just about work it out thanks guys looking forward to it bye

we’ve got no [ __ ] hope of understanding what that was behindhoven’s a bit of an anomaly so the five courses we played are noven who treat upon Canada nordvike and Hague now the last four of those are all situated kind of up near Utrecht and denharg and kind of occupied most of like that the north west of the Netherlands eindhoven’s like the absolute outlier because it’s down in the very very south I mean Casey’s the member at Eindhoven that was with us that day he’s like yeah when I go out for dinner I go to Belgium you know it’s like it’s close to the industrial Heartland isn’t it yeah exactly well actually that’s a great great segue into the the founding of the club which was you know it’s the only Club K said that doesn’t have or the only Golf Club there’s enough Club in its name it’s eindhoven’s golf which I guess is partly a product of the Phillips Factory so the Philips light bulb company they are based down in Eindhoven still that Golf Course was was was pioneered and essentially led by the Phillips group because they need to bring employers down there and I guess back in the 20s

they’ve got a hockey club and a tennis club and they’ve got this chap Harry cult building a golf course for them it’s like that what a time to be alive right I actually think Eindhoven just as a tiny little segue I think Eindhoven not in Holland the Netherlands is the whole of the country Dutch are the people from the Netherlands Holland are two provinces within the Netherlands they are large provinces with the two provinces of the Netherlands and on the west part the country north Holland and South Holland so

first time arriving at a golf club in Netherlands first impressions

we weren’t sure well I think we parked in the wrong place and then case of as the only man there in jacket entire sort of come striding down saying move the car up here so we kind of pulled around to the place where we should have actually been parking and I remember seeing the I mean you’re gonna rip me for this but I just remember seeing the practice on the left which you’re like holy [ __ ] yeah what is that like look at hackers the range look this looks beautiful you’d beat balls down there all day like the kind of like half dome building the jar could ever have a performance yeah like that great range loads of Juniors out there hitting balls and you’re like okay wow this is this looks pretty cool um and then you like go through and yeah the the clubhouse is absolutely beautiful and it’s got that little old what is what you should be the caddy Master Shadow is the old Clubhouse so like opposites like a little village almost yeah it is yeah there’s a couple of the club houses yeah like they’re like little bista Villages yeah there’s big thatch roofs like so they’ve got this beautiful sort of thatched roof Clubhouse with the Terrace that looks out you’ve got this old caddy um I think the old Clubhouse or the old caddy shed that’s like across the road from it that now somebody lives in that’s involved there the most beautiful you know kind of archetypal Dutch you know sort of the house and then there’s another building which has like okay so like oh yeah that’s that’s for the kids that’s like the junior Clubhouse it’s like a little they’re completely there’s no he did caviar with it it’s not like they they have to go there they’re allowed anywhere at the clubhouse but they have their own as well which had like Ping Pong and a alcohol-free bar and it’s pool tables or places to do their homework as well so they could then do that and then go over the back towards the practice facility and they had like a gym there as well so you could literally just spend your whole day there and then and then I just like you kind of come around the corner just around around the kids clubhouse between the main Clubhouse and kind of walk up to where the Terrace is just around to your left it sweeps around to your left you’ve got the 18th grade on your right and then the whole course just opens up in front of you and it’s just like I I wasn’t expecting I don’t think I was expecting like a heathland masterpiece just to unfold as I walked around the corner with a massive massive Lake out in front of the clubhouse and to your left then it’s just like Woodland and Heather and oh it’s just like

baby lemonade was Goku feeling too good real good yeah I’m so true remember bad days used to have you I felt blue now I’m up high in the sky like mama said if I wanted I need to have a plan get up off that corner see the world boys

neighborhood Lancaster got shot here on its return from a bombardment in Leipzig and uh so it was hit by a German fighter plane and it came over here and then it crashed over there

babies

baby

Sam yeah can you give us a Sit wrap oh I lost the game it’s supposed to go pro Bruce is here yeah come back and you miss that wrap

figure out anyway I left my laptop and camera at home we’ve got a flat tire left right now spiritually fast spiritually Sky an hour ago

Bruce looks like he’s a secretary of your field walking midnight day two are you feeling a busy

I’m just gonna lean into these emotions because I was really tired today and it got the better of my golf around iron yeah yeah I kind of does tiredness promote duck hooks is that what you’re saying there’s more the blocks that were killing me weren’t they just [ __ ] I just called the absolute Giga block out to the right

we’re all walking yeah

he’s so off talk it’s unbelievable you can use your dog with two dicks even I know he’s so happy it was just like this is the best golf club what a great day you have a lot of stuff to be able to sort this out yeah you got the t-shirt on as well not feeling the cold unbelievable no jumper on the motorway so I I don’t know where it’s [Music] and

their camera an hour and a half away well I’ll tell you here it’s someone who’s itching to go and play the five-hole short course they’ve got there where are we going

you tracked into Pawn but it was the logistical issues of like how we actually going to get this tire replaced so that we can play at the pan then get to kenama and nordvike on Friday which were you know it was 36 holes there Dawn Till dust day we were doing a podcast with the archivist that was tricked Japan so that was going to take up time even though we were only playing the pan on the Thursday and then we’d have to go to the Hague to meet our our third host villain the next morning Byron’s come round um he’s like already I’m like yeah we’ve got a bit of problem here there’s Tire issues still and I think you were twinkling away on the piano and I was making a lot of I didn’t make 20 phone calls at this point I was like burnt I rang everyone you will not fix this you know yeah and he’s like okay give me 10 minutes if he’s normal regular tires not special

let’s change the tire inside

[Music] just a brilliant bloke is aside from all of the kind of heroics around changing the car and putting it up in his in his great house in um in attract just like okay so just another cool dude as well and also Kay said wrong he’s like well I’ve been to the golf club at Eindhoven I’ve got your camera and laptop I’m going to the office now but I’m going to get someone to get a courier and it’ll be carried up it’ll be with you for no later than 12 o’clock today and you’re like that is amazing the whole thing but I think I think one of the biggest juxtapositions of the whole tour was the stressor that morning because it was stressful I mean Byron did save the day but it was a stressful warning to then stand in the serenity of Japan on that tenth hole that we started on it was just like this is the most breathtaking golf hole that I could have imagined in my in my pathetic imagination I’m looking at it and it was so calm and Serene it was like okay now breathe like it was just and I think that’s why I think Japan for me was one of one of the rounds I remember the most because it was again I wasn’t expecting it’s another Heathman course um after playing nine times another Heathen course I mean for me it had massive massive shades of selling their old I mean I don’t know what you boys thought but like I thought it had very kind of similar Shades to sign down very very hard to not draw comparisons with some of the top story courses when you look at it you know if if eindhoven’s this big sprawling heathland set in the forest where you kind of you’re playing you know it’s quite secluded attract is a is a is a complete opposite in so much as it’s very very intimate it never feels like you’re straying far from the house it’s um the holes are more connected in with each other it’s very very hard to not draw some comparisons with the old Sunningdale hmm it’s just great variety I mean a real mixture of like short par fours that you can take on try and get it close to and Pitch it on or or maybe lay back and and hit a couple of irons into um some brilliant par threes you know par fives that again have great risk and reward just just yeah I I see why you draw the comparisons with Sunningdale because there’s a good variety of risk and reward and just it’s they’re not they’re not all just like here’s another four yeah yeah sure constantly changing direction and I think I think Japan’s biggest strength is a limitation that’s placed on it is that it’s got a very small site and it can’t extend and I think you don’t know whether if they’d had the opportunity to extend they might have yeah but the footprint is so small they were forced into this little area and what they’ve ended up with is an absolute gem where you just fall off a green onto a tee and you just it’s such an easy walk there’s lots of undulations within the course there’s quite a lot about elevation change really um clean up to elevated greens and you’ve got quite a few elevated teas um six and seven I mean how good were they close par fours but that’s what I was going to say like if you look at it like it’s quite easy for pretty much every golf course I’ve played to say what’s your best stretch your holes and you’ll be like oh yeah like I really like um two through six line home and or you know I really like um you know the back line at Hillside you know what it’s like you can always say this sort of stuff pan I don’t think I could tell you it was the best part on the course it’d be a lot harder to name a week hole than to name a good stretch in architecture circles that you get you know compression and release and all this as a round goes through you kind of like there’s tension the release of tension and you kind of do that as you go around and excitement and then it it dulls down so you can get more excitement later on but genuinely you just you start off on this really high level you’re like whoa this is cool and then you stay there and you stay there it’s almost like you’re being fully compressed or fully released the whole way I don’t know which one it is it’s smacking you in the mouth there’s no release to it so good yeah everywhere other courses that achieve that in fact like you say always have a point where the all of a sudden momentum drops off it never seems to happen at Japan yeah and when it does it’s noticeable it’s like you’ve played 10 staggeringly good goal poles oh and then it dips the two or three holes and you slightly out of the it’s always hard to build them back back up because it’s always like a game of momentum when you’re looking at a golf course it just never happened I mean certainly because we started it the wrong way around but if you go back to the to the we play it in the afternoon the right way around you know one two three four really good good golf holes you’ve got five that they’re gonna do a bit of work too just with some some tree removal and once they do that little bit that’s going to be like and then six and seven are amazing great part three nine seriously understated stunning part yeah I thought then you’ve got ten amazing eleven the par five buster outstanding golf on 12 and outrageously good part three yeah downhill with most insane green sight I mean I’ve never played it but I would imagine and then you get it that it’s yeah gone then you get to 15 or 43 that part three which is just mind-blowing yeah like 160 170 16 mid length 17 drivable perched up green like what a golf hole everybody