The International - Amsterdam

You won’t need your passport to board the first tee at The International at Amsterdam Airport, just take your normal golfing gear. But if you’re a plane spotter you might get distracted.

Set a few hundred metres to the east of the Buitenveldertbaan and Oostbaan runways at Schiphol Airport, the golf course at The International is sited more for convenience than charm.

Ian Woosnam is the headline architect of The International but it was the Belgian designer, Bruno Steensels of Mastergolf, who brought The International to life. In November 2012, shortly after the course opened for play, David Davis our Benelux correspondent teed it up alongside the architect. David’s comments follow, but continue reading his review further down the page to get the full story.

“There’s been a lot of hype and excitement around Amsterdam’s new championship golf course called The International. As fortune would have it I joined the Belgian architect, Mr. Bruno Steensels, who received the unique opportunity to literally paint his own canvas, carte blanche, for a round at his new pride and joy.

At first it’s quite hard to imagine a golf course being placed in this extremely chaotic location right between Amsterdam’s Schiphol

The International’s clubhouse is now fully open and it fits snugly into the surroundings, fashioned in stone and glass. It would not look out of place on the other side of the A9 highway at Schiphol Airport.

Airport and the city itself, with two major highways (A9 and A4) nearly serving as the South and West boundaries, but there it is. The course is now finished and open for play, the clubhouse is still in progress so the first impression is one of a construction site although perhaps not too far from completion. The good news is they were working in full force.

Being a golfer that really loves the quiet and tranquil settings often found in golf and having just returned from a trip to Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon last week where I received just that, I would classify this location as terrible but perhaps equally important terribly convenient. Amsterdam has long been without any real professional golf facility within 30 minutes of the city and absolutely no championship courses. This has traditionally served for mild logistical nightmares when it comes to organizing the country’s only stop on the European Tour, The Dutch Open. I suspect however that the future is bright with this course offering everything a Dutch Open and its participants and sponsors could ever desire.

I realize that I can’t iterate enough my personal preference and bias towards natural, secluded, quiet and tranquil locations, however to the pure credit of Mr. Steensels he’s certainly won me over with this purely magnificent design creating 18 completely unique holes in an outside to inside clockwise to counter clockwise routing that showcases dramatic (for The Netherlands) elevation changes of 14 meters (7 meters below sea level to 7 meters above sea level). This has resulted in a quite dramatic dunes landscape and as far as I’m concerned won the sand castle building contest for the year all at the same time.”

Click the link to read David's full review from September 2013.