Netherlands World Cup players get their kicks at KC golf course. ‘They’re massive’
Exactly where the players were right before they showed up at the golf course is not certain.
They could have driven up from where they’re lodging at the Cascade Hotel on the Country Club Plaza. Or from the Kansas City Current Training facility, where the Dutch squad practices, in Riverside.
Or it’s possible that the eight members of the Netherlands’ World Cup team — each dressed in white shirts with orange piping, plus shorts printed with the orange “Dutch lion” — may have just come from the Downtown Airport given that one day prior they were in Dallas for a 2-2 match against Japan.
Whatever the case, on Monday some of the greatest voetbal players in the world decided to fixate not on a large ball and a net on the international stage, but on a tiny ball and a cup in Kansas City, North.
“I’m going to assume they just Googled, got their phones out and said, ‘golf courses near the airport,’” said Rhett Fregoe, the director of operations for the Tiffany Greens Golf Club and where, he said, a phone call came in just before 3 p.m., telling him that members of the Dutch team were on their way.
In need of golf clubs, golf balls, golf clothes, golf carts
“They said this was their first stop and they said, ‘We just flew in.’ They literally had on their Tek T-shirts, and their gym shorts and they bought a couple of polos from us,” Fregoe said.
Two G/FORE polos, one in teal and another in blue, and one pink Johnnie-O.
“They bought a bunch of hats from us,” with Tiffany Greens stitched above the brim, ”and a bunch of golf balls.”
In other words, they had no equipment. No clubs.
“They rented all our rental sets,” Fregoe said. “They rented four sets of clubs. They had eight players.”
In a full 90-minute World Cup match, players tend to run between six to eight miles.
They rented four golf carts.
General manager Hannah Noll typed the tee time and party name into the computer: “3:09 p.m. Netherlands Soccer Team.”
Athletic and very, very, very muscular
The public/private club has received a few well-known people before as visitors. Former Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver JuJu Smith-Shuster, now with the New York Giants, had played there in the past. Earlier this month, on June 13, country singer Dierks Bentley played a round.
Although no one at the club knew the Dutch players’ names, and the players appeared to speak scant English, they made a lasting impression: tall, young.
“Athletic,” said bar manager Riley Cisna.
“They’re massive,” Fregoe said. “They were very, very, very muscular.”
Before the players hit the first tee and sped off in their carts, four young women at the club — immediate “fan girls,” as Noll put it — made sure they snapped a photo with the players with Noll, Cisna, Sophia Rodriguez, who runs the beverage cart and bartender Isabella Cerv in the picture.
The women then got on the internet to search the team roster to see if they could identify the players.
“There’s the goalie, I think,” Noll said.
Tiffany Greens
Tiffany Greens is an 18-hole, 72-par course. The Dutch players stayed out for five hours, drinking teas and soda and water, before they returned to the clubhouse and had coffee until sunset when the club closed.
On Thursday, the Netherlands is set to face Tunisia at 6 p.m. at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, renamed Kansas City Stadium during the tournament.
That morning, at about 11 a.m., several thousands orange-clad fans are expected to amass at the Power & Light District to bounce and chant and, gradually, to march down to the site of the FIFA Fan Festival, on the grounds of the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
By tradition, they will engage in what, by now, has become the fans’ signature “links rechts” dance, in which the entire throng moves left-to-right while singing in a clamorous display.
A golf outing it is not.
This story was originally published June 23, 2026 at 4:17 PM.
