This page refers to the sport of kolf. For the computer game see KolfKolf is a miniature golf game for KDE, that was developed by Jason Katz-Brown in 2002. The game is played from an overhead view, with a short bar representing the golf club. Kolf features many different types of objects, such water hazards, slopes, sand traps, and black holes , among others...
.
Kolven (singular
kolf) is a game originated in the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
, played by several individuals with heavy curved bats (
kliekA kliek is a heavy curved bat to play kolf with.-Literature:*Kolven, het plaisir om sig in dezelve te diverteren. Uitgave 2001 van de Kolfclub Utrecht St. Eloyen Gasthuis. -External links:...
s) and a
ballA ball is a round object with various uses. It is usually spherical but can be ovoid. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch, marbles and juggling...
between two poles on an indoor kolf
courtA court is a body, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes and dispense civil, criminal, or administrative justice in accordance with rules of law....
.
Game
Kolf is in no way to be confused with
golfGolf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players , using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area...
(although it can well claim to be a close relative). Kolf is played on an indoor course some 17.5 metres long and 5 metres wide, marked with looping scoring lines, and with an ornate wooden post planted at each end. Nowadays, a Kolf
courtA court is a body, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes and dispense civil, criminal, or administrative justice in accordance with rules of law....
has a floor made of a sort of
plasticPlastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic amorphous solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products...
and needs to be as water-level as possible.
There are three
playersA player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games....
in a match and each has his own ball. The balls are quite large and are made either of
rubberNatural rubber is an elastomer that was originally derived from a milky colloidal suspension, or latex, found in the sap of some plants. The purified form of natural rubber is the chemical polyisoprene, which can also be produced synthetically...
or sajet (
woolWool is a fibrous protein derived from the specialized skin cells called follicles. The wool is taken from animals in the Caprinae family, principally sheep, but the hair of certain species of other mammals including: goats, llamas, and rabbits may also be called wool...
covered with
leatherLeather is a material created through the tanning of hides and skins of animals, primarily cattlehide. The tanning process converts the putrescible skin into a durable and versatile material....
). The rubber balls are the most popular, although they have to be at least 80–100 years old before they are fully mature. The older the rubber gets, the less spring it has; this in turn encourages a better roll and that in Kolf is most important.
The club used, known as a
kliekA kliek is a heavy curved bat to play kolf with.-Literature:*Kolven, het plaisir om sig in dezelve te diverteren. Uitgave 2001 van de Kolfclub Utrecht St. Eloyen Gasthuis. -External links:...
, has a very strong wooden shaft and a heavy
metalA metal is a chemical element that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat, forms cations and ionic bonds with non-metals. In chemistry, a metal is an element, compound, or alloy characterized by high electrical conductivity. In a metal, atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions...
head. The head on the kliek used for the rubber ball is somewhat larger than that used for the sajetball, the reason being that the rubber ball is slightly larger and heavier.
The aim of the game is to hit the post at the far end, having started from the starting post. Then one is to hit the post at the starting end and return the ball back to the far end, or scoring end. This is all to be done in three strokes. The posts are set at an angle of 85% towards each other, so that the balls don’t jump when they hit the posts.
In playing the game, the player often makes use of rebounds on the walls of the court, similar to
billiardsCue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
. The closer the ball finishes to the end wall, the higher the player's
scoreIn games, score refers to an abstract quantity associated with a player or team. Score is usually measured in the abstract unit of points, and events in the game can raise or lower the score of different parties...
. In a tournament, players play a total of 15 games, each game consisting of 3 shots. Usually 5 games are played in succession, the winner being the player with the highest total of points.
Every player is placed in one of five classes according to his skill. Lower classes are sometimes given the advantage of extra points, so they can compete on an even basis with a player from a higher class. Clubs play against each other, and there is also a national
championship- Title match system :In this system, a competitor has to challenge the current champion to win the championship. This form of championship is used in wrestling, boxing, and other combat sports.- Tournament system :...
every year. Since 1966, women also play too.
The method of hitting the ball is different for each player. Players generally crouch low and adopt a wide
stanceStance is a morpheme meaning stand, used in several ways:* to take a position in an argument, a stand on a given issue;* refers to a particular standing postureThere are also a wide variety of stances adopted in martial arts and sports:* boxing stances...
, with the hands quite far apart on the kliek. During the stroke, the head of the kliek never leaves the ground. It is of the utmost importance that the player keeps his body extremely still. No special clothing is worn, and players wear normal street shoes.
Kolf is often played with the accompaniment of a
jeneverJenever , is the juniper-flavored and strongly alcoholic traditional liquor of the Netherlands, Belgium and Northern France , from which gin evolved...
or a good
cigarA cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Philippines, and the...
. There are currently 31
clubA club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal. A service club, for example, exists for voluntary or charitable activities; there are clubs devoted to hobbies and sports, social activities clubs, political and religious clubs, and so forth.- History...
s and only 14 courses, compared with the hundreds which existed before. Of the courses still in use, all but one are in the tiny villages of Northern
HollandRotterdam
The Hague
Haarlem
Dordrecht |} Holland is a name in common usage given to a region in the western part of the Netherlands. The name 'Holland' is also often informally used to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands...
. In the old days, they were invariably attached to cafés or social centres. Less than 1,000 people out of Holland’s population of 16 million, about 350 men and 250 women, play Kolf.
History
The ancestry of kolf is long and intriguing, reaching well back beyond most reliable written records. There is evidence, however, that it had its roots in what is believed to be another Dutch invention, the game which the world now knows as
golfGolf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players , using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area...
.
Early Europeans, no less than modern Europeans, were sport fanatics. Documents as far back as the year 1200 mention four popular games involving both club and ball: chole in
BelgiumThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
and
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
,
jeu de mailJeu de mail or jeu de maille is a now-obsolete lawn game originating in the 15th century and mostly played in France., and surviving in some locales into the 20th century...
in France, and beugelen and the klosbaan in
HollandRotterdam
The Hague
Haarlem
Dordrecht |} Holland is a name in common usage given to a region in the western part of the Netherlands. The name 'Holland' is also often informally used to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands...
.
- Chole was probably the closest to modern golf
Golf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players , using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area...
. It was played with ironIron is a metallic chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 element and is therefore classified as a transition metal. Iron and iron alloys are by far the most common metals and the most common ferromagnetic materials in everyday use...
-headed clubs and a wooden ball, and the aim was to reach a given target in the minimum number of strokes.
- Jeu de mail
Jeu de mail or jeu de maille is a now-obsolete lawn game originating in the 15th century and mostly played in France., and surviving in some locales into the 20th century...
was not dissimilar, except that it was played with a metal hammer. It could be played on a course, but the most popular form was mail a la chicane, which went cross country.
- The two Dutch sports, beugelen and the klosbaan, both involved hitting the ball through a narrow gap on the course. Beugelen still survives, in fact, and can be seen in the southern Dutch province
A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Roman provinces:The word is attested in English since c.1330, deriving from Old French province , which comes from the Latin word provincia, which referred to the sphere of activity which a...
of LimburgLimburg is the southern-most of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands. It is located in the southeastern part of the country and bordered by Belgium to the south and part of the west, Germany to the east, the Dutch province of North Brabant partly to the west, and the province of Gelderland to...
.
In the interchange of fashion and trade, all these games tended to spill across hazy national borders. Holland developed its own version of jeu de mail, which it called maliespel, about the same time as the English court set up a mail course on the wide avenue now known as Pall Mail (i.e. pallemaille).
But it was a combination of jeu de mail and chole which seems to have appealed most to the sporting instincts of the Dutch. They called the new game colf, and within a few years they had become a nation of passionate players. The game was played in the streets, in public squares, or anywhere there was sufficient space. Sometimes the players set up a pole which they could use as a target, other times they simply picked a handy local landmark. The winner was the one who reached the chosen point in the minimum number of strokes.
The cost of all this sporting activity, mainly in broken windows, was not welcomed by the authorities. Indeed, the best indication of the sport's widespread popularity is the number of official ordinances which were made against it. In
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
, for instance, colf players were banned from the long and narrow street known as the Nes, under penalty of having their cloth confiscated. In 1456 they were banned from playing around and inside the church at
NaardenNaarden is a municipality and a town in the Gooi region in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. Naarden is an example of a Spanish star fort, complete with fortified walls and a moat...
. In many other cities and towns they were relegated to playing outside municipal limits. In winter, at least, the problem was less severe. When the canals and lakes froze over, many Dutch colf players took to the ice, finding an ideal playing surface and all the space they needed. The game was often featured in frozen river scenes in paintings.
At some time during the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
, the colf craze seems to have travelled across the
North SeaThe North Sea is a marginal, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf. The Dover Strait and the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north connect it to the Atlantic Ocean. It is more than long and wide, with an area of around...
to Holland's trading neighbour,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. While the Scots may claim to have invented the game of golf - and certainly they did perfect it in its modern form - the evidence shows that the original idea was brought back by Scottish merchants to
St AndrewsSt Andrews is a town and former royal burgh on the east coast of Fife in Scotland. The town is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle. St Andrews has a population of 16,596 making this the fifth largest settlement in Fife....
, in the county of Fife, from
HanseaticHanseatic may refer to:* The Hanseatic League, a trading alliance in northern Europe in existence between the 13th and 17th centuries.* The Hanseatic , the synonym for the members of the upper class of the free imperial cities Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck since the middle of the 17th century after...
ports where colf was being played.
But oddly, while Scotland was developing golf as a spacious outdoor game, the Dutch were doing exactly the opposite with colf. Instead of playing in the open, more and more were adapting the game to a form that could be played on the old maliespel courses, which mostly adjoined cafés and inns. Increasingly, these courses were roofed over, until finally the new game was entirely played indoors. Thus was born the unique Dutch game of kolf.
From the beginning of the 18th century, the game caught on quickly. Records show that by 1769 there were about 200 courses in Amsterdam alone, of which more than 30 were covered; in 1792 there were 350 courses in the whole of Holland, almost half of them covered.
Initially, players used the same sticks as they had for colf, with bails made of tightly-wound wool, covered with leather. But as kolf developed, a larger ball came into use, more suitable for the new form of the game, and the sticks became correspondingly heavier.
A major technical breakthrough came in 1830, when balls made of
gutta-perchaGutta-percha is a genus of tropical trees native to Southeast Asia and northern Australasia, from Taiwan south to the Malay Peninsula and east to the Solomon Islands. It is also an inelastic natural latex produced from the sap of these trees, particularly from the species Palaquium gutta...
, an early form of rubber, were introduced. These balls were larger still, the gutta-percha softer and less resilient than the rubber of today. They were used in addition to the wool-and-leather balls, rather than replacing them.
No one is certain why kolf swiftly began to fade in popularity towards the end of the last century. There was competition from newer sports such as soccer and
cyclingCycling is an activity most commonly performed on a bicycle - when it is it is also referred to as bicycling or simply biking. It is the use of the bicycle, unicycle , tricycles , quadracycles , and other similar wheeled human-powered vehicles for the purpose of transport, as a form of...
, of course, but a more likely reason seems to be that the cafe owners who operated most of the courses found that they were no longer economical. One by one, the courses fell into disuse, and the space was used otherwise. Now many old cafés' dance floors or billiard tables hide what once was a kolf course.
Of the 14 courses still in use, all but one are in the tiny villages of Northern Holland. The one course found outside North Holland is in
UtrechtUtrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern end of the Randstad, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands, with a population of 300,030 in 2007...
, in the St. Eloyen Gasthuis (
St. Eloy's HospiceSt. Eloy's Hospice is a Guild House in Utrecht in the Netherlands.Between the Dom tower and the Mariaplaats in Utrecht in The Netherlands there is a unique house that bears the name: St. Eloyen Gasthuis . The house has been occupied by the Smedengilde since 1440. According to documents preserved...
). This beautiful course is the oldest in the Netherlands, and although it bas been restored more than once, its history dates back to 1730. The Gasthuis (or old
hospiceHospice is a type of care and a philosophy of care which focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's symptoms.In the United States and Canada:*Rainbow Hospice, non-profit in Chicago, Illinois...
) is a building owned by the city’s ancient guild of metalsmiths.
An obstacle encountered with a sport as old as kolf is obtaining the proper equipment: there are a few craftsmen who still make the special metal-headed klieks used to play, but almost none who manufacture balls of the right material or quality needed for the sport. Fortunately, the manufacture of the surviving equipment is excellent, and the life of both the sticks and balls is long. Most modern players use equipment which has been passed from father to son or friend to friend, or is borrowed from a club. Some players make their own wool-cored balls, or restore old ones which have already given many years' service. Most of the leather balls in use are at least 80 years old, which makes them true sporting antiques; the trouble is that modern rubber balls bounce too much for the kolf course, making for a less traditional experience.