Jan Ebbinge’s been accepted into Amherst College, in Massachusetts, an hour and a-half’s drive from Boston, where he’ll play for its men’s golf team and study maths.
He says he fell in love with golf when he joined the Wakatipu Junior Golf Club (now Futures Whakatipu), led by Simon Boland, at the age of 12.
"As young golfers we were welcomed to play and compete at several golf courses.
"It was a great learning environment where alongside many adult golfers we fine-tuned our golf game, etiquette and embraced solid competition."
Golf coaches Craig Palmer and Ben Guilford also encouraged him to develop his passion for competition, he says.
Highlights include winning the Skyline Classic with his dad, Eduard, when he was only 14, placing third in the under-19 nationals in 2022 and representing Wakatipu High and Otago.
To hone his game and prepare for his American college entrance exams, he enrolled last year with Te Kura correspondence school, completing his NCEA.
He’s also competed in several Jennian Homes Charles Tour events and scored 66 in his final round at the challenging Muriwai Open in Auckland in April.
Since then he’s been in the US teaching kids golf at Camp America’s Trail’s End Camp in Pennsylvania.
Ebbinge says he loves "the technical challenge of golf and the mental side, and stepping on to a tee box never gets old".
Amherst’s competitive golf season is relatively short because large snowfalls are common in winter.
As a result he’s looking forward to a month back home at Christmas "to get my daily golfing fix".
Meantime, his brother Willem, four years his senior, has just graduated from the US’s Harvard University, where he played football — last year he also captained the New Zealand under-23 football side who qualified for the Paris Olympics, but didn’t play due to an ACL injury.
