Where the combine once mowed the corn of the land, the golf balls now roll over the tightly mowed grass. The golf course in Ees has been around for exactly twenty years today. What started years ago as a wild dream of Rikus (65) and Jannie (62) Ottens, has since become a family business where son Ferdie (34) has recently been at the helm.
“I was not necessarily a fanatic golfer, not actually at all,” laughs Rikus Ottens. “Until we once played and thought a game of pitch and putt, more people should do this.” And let Rikus just a good piece of agricultural land on the outskirts of Ees. Together with Jannie, who was still in front of the class at the time, he decided to turn the helm radically. “We wanted something in recreation and why not a golf course?”
In 2004 the first excavators started to hum. “The farmer from the village was still combining,” Ferdie recalls. “When he was ready, we could start.” A year later, on 10 June 2005, Country Golf Ees opened its doors.
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