Tom van Balen
Nederlands

About

Raised on the edge of the Veluwe

I’m Tom van Balen, twenty-three years old and an amateur golfer. I grew up on the edge of the Veluwe, where the woods and heathland are never far away, and where as a boy I was far more often outdoors than in.

Golf became more than a pastime early on. What started with a few clubs on the practice ground grew into the sport that shapes my days: the early mornings, the hours on the range, the calm of an empty course at first light.

Tom van Balen on the course
The Rosendaelsche Golf Club near Arnhem

Where I play

At home at the Rosendaelsche

I play out of the Rosendaelsche Golf Club, one of the oldest and finest courses in the Netherlands, set into the rolling landscape near Arnhem. It’s the course where my game took shape, and the one I still most like to come back to.

My year follows a steady rhythm. In summer I play in the Netherlands: tournaments, qualifiers and competition on home courses. In winter I head to Spain, where the mild climate lets me keep training and playing while the Dutch courses lie under frost.

How my coaches see it

Tom works harder than anyone, and he does it with a calm you can’t teach. A bad hole doesn’t rattle him; he plays the next shot as though the last one never happened.

as my coaches put it