Jan van de Minkeles has just asked his golf mate to order him a beer. This 25-year-old from the village of Andel in theNetherlandsnever imagined himself as a golfer, but here he is taking lessons. “I thought it was a bit of a yuppie sport – but it’s not,” he beams.
Van de Minkeles is part of a new wave of Dutch golfers blowing the cobwebs from the sport in a country where it wasonce associated with members-only clubsand buttoned-up dress codes.
Figures from theRoyal Dutch Golf Federation(NGF) show the number of golfers has ticked up to almost 430,000 people. But the sport, faced with an ageing population, is on a drive to recruit even more new blood. Two years ago, it started a national “welcome to the club” campaign to encourage more women and younger golfers aged between 25 and 50.
“We have a kind of beautiful green secret on the golf range, but we don’t tell people enough about it,” says Niki Wijnen, an NGF spokesperson. “The image of golf is that a lot of people think it’s for [old] men in red trousers with a matching accent, that you need to be extremely rich, but this really isn’t the case in the Netherlands. To keep the sport young, you want more young people, more talent.”
This is the explicit aim at the Hollandsche Golfclub Almkreek, where the owner Hans Schaap and operational director Joris Slooten are two men “in their golden days” with a mission to throw open the sport, because of the principle of the thing, and also because it makes commercial sense.
Slooten explains that Dutch clubs developed with an association structure, run by their members, but that this now means that some people pay for unlimited play and do not use it, while games are more expensive for interested, occasional amateurs. “We don’t have a dress code, people walk around with normal clothes and the atmosphere is informal,” he said. “Our motto isgewoon gezellig– just good fun.”
Schaap bought this club in 2018 and manages another 23, with an impressive fleet of 380 mowing machines to keep the grass nicely trimmed. He called in Slooten to identify the “intimidating” factors that were stopping young people replacing members who had died – and now they have a credit-based payment model, affordable lessons with free club hire and a restaurant where everyone is welcome. “Everyone who gets the same and pays less thinks it’s fantastic,” he said. “There’s a small group that has to pay more or leave, but that is 5% or 10%.”
More importantly, he reckons, the atmosphere has changed, even if Donald Trump’s elite clubs continue to do the game a disservice. “Thirty years ago when I said I maintained golf courses, people would give me a strange look and say it was all check trousers and snobs,” he said. “But it has got more accessible … Trump is precisely the opposite of what we want to express.”
Aside from the danger of a golf ball on your head,the game has accessible health benefitsaccording to Dr Andrew Murray, a sport and exercise researcher at the University of Edinburgh. “It can appeal to everyone and all levels of fitness,” he said. “Theevidenceis consistent and growing that golf provides healthy physical activity, access to green space and social connections, which provide longer length of life and a reduction in many physical and mental health conditions.”
Particularly in a small country like the Netherlands, everyone can also benefit from access to nature, says John Ott, a friend of the Bleijenbeek golf course owner, who has combated their decline in membership by opening agolf museumand making the Limburg landscape accessible to walkers, holidaymakers and nature lovers.
“Pieter van Afferden, a Dutch Latin teacher,wrote a little book in 1545, Tyrocinium Linguae Latinae, which describes the golf rules as they are now played,” he said, arguing that the low countries first documented thesport ofcolven. “Of course, the rules must be observed, so the game may not be altered. But if that’s not done, we haven’t encountered any real resistance.”
Back at the sunny Golfclub Almkreek, a happy teenager is whizzing around mowing the grass, the ranges and restaurant are full, and the tattoos, baseball caps and short shorts on display have replaced the red trousers. “I don’t see the golf, but the nature, birds and rabbits,” said Carin Lankhaar, 65, from Eethen, who recently started playing. “Everyone is welcome – it’s not at all elitist.”
She is looking forward to another 20 years of vigorous golf. “Nou, hupsakee!” she said – up and at ’em!