'Up and at 'em!' New generation of golfers gets to grips with sport in the Netherlands

Jan van de Minkeles has just asked his golf mate for a beer. This 25-year-old from the village of Andel in the Netherlands never 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 beamed.

- Senay Boztas

Van de Minkeles is part of a new wave of Dutch golfers blowing the cobwebs from the sport in a country where it was once associated with members-only clubs and buttoned-up dress codes.

Figures from the Royal Dutch Golf Federation (NGF) show the number of golfers has ticked up to almost 430,000 people. 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," said 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."