2016 Opening Dutch Golf Museum

The seed for the Dutch Golf Museum was sown in December 2015. The occasion was a speech by Gerard Jol, architect of the golf course at Landgoed Bleijenbeek, and a symposium on golf history with Professor Heiner Gillmeister and Robin Bargmann.

It led John Ott, friend of the Vink family, to Pieter van Afferden, humanist and teacher of Greek and Latin from the early 16th century. In 1545 he wrote the textbook Tyrocineum linguae Latinae (Latin for newcomers) and included a chapter on ball games in which the rules of golf are described, which are surprisingly similar to our current basic rules.

There was no Dutch golf museum yet, but it had to be built and Afferden seemed a logical place. John’s penchant for history and his conversations with father and son Vink of Golf Course Landgoed Bleijenbeek were fertile ground for ‘his’ museum idea.

After Ferd Vrijmoed had spontaneously responded to his enthusiasm for recruiting, one thing naturally led to another and “before you know it, you are putting together a museum with a bunch of enthusiastic people”.

On April 22, 2016, the Dutch Golf Museum will be opened by golf coordinators Robbie van Erven Dorens and Jan Dorrestein.