The remarkable layout at Kennemer is among the finest links

CADDIE'S ROLE:As soon as you arrive at Kennemer Golf Club you know you are somewhere special.

IT WAS a week on the coast in Holland last week when the North European gentlemen understood why they bought those finely tailored linen jackets. The occasion to sport the summer’s finest wardrobe was the great outdoor spectacle of the Dutch Open at Kennemer Golf Club.

It was fascinating to come across such a gem of a links course amongst the dunes of the Dutch coast. It’s not like you immediately associate this part of the world as a golfing destination. Well that’s exactly how the Flemish coast was developed at the end of the 19th century. Not specifically for golf but in order to attract the British aristocrats to northern Europe for holidays and having a good golf course was a good way to do that.

It looked like the Dutch aristocrats had taken over the hospitality area last weekend in the elegant but temporary entertainment area constructed around the practice range on the spare nine holes of the Kennemer Golf Club.

It is the first time that I have seen such a set up at a tournament whereby the driving range became something of an amphitheatre. The paying public and invited guests surrounded the back and side of the range and enjoyed champagne and fine wine as the entertainers warmed up in preparation for their serious rounds of golf.

If this became a regular arrangement on tour I would imagine that even the players with the most acute hearing, and therefore the most likely to be distracted, would become accustomed to a brouhaha as they hit their shots and ignore on course noise as a result.

Holland is a country that is not known for golf, yet it has a curiously long association with the game. When you consider new golfing nations like Sweden and Denmark, who have produced a plethora of world players in the past two decades, without links to the origins of the game it got me curious about how the game developed here centuries ago.

When I asked about the history of the club it was suggested that I talk to the club historian Robin Bargmann.

What I thought was going to be a brief chat about the humble beginnings of his club turned out to be a European history lesson.

So the story began with me overlooking the Kennemer links scorched from the recent heat wave and littered with spectators during the afternoons play on Saturday. I gazed across the links land from the thatch-roofed understated clubhouse as I listened to Mr. Bargmann muse over past centuries.

Until the end of the 18th century old golf was played in the Lowlands. When the preference moved to a French cultural persuasion, the old game disappeared. We got into Waterloo and Wellington and the British being put back in their place, according to my source. I was informed that 50 per cent of the worlds wealth was concentrated in the Lowlands in the 17th century.

We skipped through the decades quicker than you could say sollen met den kolve which translates to play ball, which is the form of golf they played in Holland in the pre-industrial revolution era. With the industrial revolution came rubber and thus the gutta perch golf ball was created. In that era more golf clubs were founded outside Britain than within the British Isles.

It was in the colonies that the Dutch once again came in contact with the games that were introduced by the British; tennis, football, rugby and of course golf. So when the British and the Dutch met in the colonies and had the common interest of the defeat of Napoleon, the returning military men brought the modern game of golf back with them to their homeland.

Five clubs were founded at the end of the 19th century; De Haagsche, Doornsche, Rosendaelsche, Hilversumsche and Kennemer and they formed the Dutch Golf Federation.

Then in the 1920s there was a Colt Cult that hit Holland. Harry Colt, probably the original golf architect, broke the mould of previous designers who had come either from the caddie or player ranks.

Colt was a Cambridge educated lawyer and former secretary of Rye and Sunningdale golf clubs, who successfully turned his hand to course design.

Another Englishman greatly influenced the development of golf in Holland. Henry Burrows was a golfing dilettante in the early 20th century, who was well versed in all matters golf; from technique, teaching, playing, club making and repairs, course design, to maintenance and green keeping.

At a young age he decided to take his talent to Holland. He won his first Dutch Open title at Kennemer. He went on to win two more Dutch Opens. Having won the title as the best professional of the Dutch Open five times he got to keep the Wisselbeker for Golf Professionals trophy. The trophy is a permanent exhibit in the Golf Museum in St Andrews in Scotland. In the tented village the Burrows trophy was on display alongside the Dutch Open trophy.

In true keeping with the sense of history of the game in Holland Robin Bargmann had a surprise guest travel to Kennemer last weekend in order to present the trophy to this years winner Simon Dyson.

Henry Burrows’ daughter Dolly, now in her eighties, proudly handed over the trophy behind the 18th green on Sunday to an Englishman who travels the world to ply his trade. Much like her father did 100 years ago.