Historyrique | Golfika

A bit of history.

The Golfika web-site started in 1997 as the personal web-site of J-B Kazmierczak. It became soon the link between all golf collectors and historians, initially in France but then all around the world, focusing on the European Continent.

It established a strong relationship between a group of friends, sharing information, ideas and items related to Continental golf, creating the first virtual association of golf historians and collectors in Europe.

Of course, this was not the first association of golf collectors. In 1970, in the USA, was created the GCS - Golf Collector Society. A group of 27 impassioned persons decided to form the first society of golf collectors and historians. A few years later, UK followed, inaugurating the BGCS - British Golf Collector Society.

Today these two societies are well established. Thirty years later, the first counts 1200 members for 27 millions golfers and the second 520 for 3.8 millions.

In France, there were a few trials, in the past, to create such an association; all failed. Taking for base a ratio close to what is observed in the United States or in UK, we can expect about thirty or forty possible members. It is certainly too few to be successful in forming a living group.

A similar situation should be expected in all the other countries of Continental Europe. As several, among us, established friendly contacts with collectors in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark or Switzerland, it appeared that a project federating these passions could be the right way to take.

So, after many years of virtual relationship, the core group of friends on the Continent decided to create a formal association. Starting in 2005, we exchanged a lot of e-mails, met a lot of people, received many suggestions, sent several "Information Letters" to all supporters of our project. This association is now a lively one. Following a suggestion from John Hanna (then Captain of the BGCS) we decided to name it:

The European Association of Golf Historians & Collectors (EAGHC)
also called Association Européenne des Historiens & Collectionneurs de Golf

We are working closely to the British Golf Collector Society and the American one. Both are supporting our actions in their magazine. As well as the Deutches Golf Archiv (Dietrich Quanz, The Dutch “Early Golf Foundation” (Dr J. Ayolt Brongers) and the Golf Museum from Denmark (Erik Halling, Poul-Erik Jensen). The association received a strong support from many prominent international figures which is impossible to list here.
Let us just thanks Lally Segard (viscountess de Saint Sauveur), who gave us the energy to complete our project and who kindly accepted to take the Honorary Presidency.