An 80-year-old golf course designed by Harry S. Colt will serve as the inspiration for a heathland-style layout that’s to be built just east of Eindhoven, in southern Holland.
De Swinkelsche will take shape on 240 acres in Someren. Its developers, Harry and Hendrik Swinkels, hope it reminds people of Eindhovensche Golf Course, a nearby Colt-designed track that opened in 1930 and is, according to Golf Course Architecture, “generally considered the best course of the southern Netherlands.”
The brothers were hoping to break ground on the course in early 2011. It’ll be joined by an aqua range and, eventually, a nine-hole “practice” course.
De Swinkelsche has been designed by Frank Pont, a Den Dolder-based architect whose work emulates that of “classic” designers, particularly Colt and Tom Simpson. Pont may be biased, but he told me via e-mail that De Swinkelsche will be “one of the Netherlands’ best new courses built in the last 30 years.”
Pont, the principal of Infinite Variety Golf Design, earned an MBA at the University of Chicago and, after a stint as an investment banker in England, studied golf design in Edinburgh and did an apprenticeship with David McLay Kidd. His 18-hole course at Turfvaert Golfpark in Breda opened last year, and he’s renovated or is currently renovating nearly two dozen courses designed by Colt, Simpson, Henry Cotton, and Frank Pennink.
Pont is also waiting to begin work on two other projects in the Netherlands. In late 2011 or early 2012, he expects to break ground on a 36-hole complex for the 1,350-acre Landgoed Princepeel estate near Nijmegen, and in 2012 he hopes to start work on an 18-hole course for the Rolduc seminary and conference center in Kerkrade.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
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