Museum Dutch Golf Museum

The seed for the Dutch Golf Museum was sown in December 2015. The reason was a speech by Gerard Jol and a symposium on golf history with Heiner Gillmeister and Robin Bargmann. It led John Ott, a 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 and included a chapter on ball games in which golf rules are described, which are surprisingly similar to our current basic rules. There was no Dutch golf museum yet, but it had to be built in Afferden.

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 recruiting enthusiasm, one thing naturally led to another and "before you know it, you are putting together a museum with a bunch of enthusiastic people".

After a gestation period of a few months, the museum was born in perfect health on 22 April 2016, where it saw numerous admiring glances. That day became one big party that is now celebrated annually with a big hickory tournament that heralds the opening of the hickory season.