Nicolas Colsaerts: The Belgian Bomber Flying Global Fairways While Europe Burns
The Belgian Bombshell Who Reminds Us Golf Is Still Just Golf
By H. L. Marchand, Dave’s Locker International Desk
From the fairways of Flanders to the flood-lit driving ranges of Dubai, Nicolas Colsaerts has spent the better part of two decades proving that talent travels while disappointment enjoys a diplomatic passport. The man nicknamed “The Belgian Bomber” can launch a Titleist into low orbit, yet his career arc resembles a parabola that never quite lands where the brochures promised—an elegant metaphor for the 21st-century West, if you think about it.
Colsaerts’ 2012 Ryder Cup debut at Medinah was, for a fleeting weekend, the most uplifting thing to come out of Europe since the single currency. Partnered with a visibly relieved Justin Rose, he pummelled the Americans so convincingly that even U.S. captain Davis Love III looked momentarily interested in Belgian beer. Yet the continent’s subsequent slide into debt spasms, populist tantrums, and energy rationing has left that Sunday singles win feeling like the final canapé before the reception runs out of champagne.
Since then, Colsaerts has ricocheted between the European Tour, the Challenge Tour, and that purgatorial lounge known as the Golf Channel’s B-feature. Observers keep expecting the “next big thing” to materialize; instead, we get the same polite shrug from a man whose swing is worth more than most national GDPs, but whose trophy cabinet could fit comfortably in a Brussels studio flat. It is a testament to golf’s exquisite cruelty that a player can be longer off the tee than a Siberian gas pipeline yet still miss cuts by a single clumsy three-putt.
Still, there is planetary significance in Colsaerts’ itinerant grind. Every January he boards a plane to Abu Dhabi or Singapore, chasing appearance-money crumbs tossed by sovereign wealth funds who treat the Pro-Am as geopolitical speed-dating. The sight of a mild-mannered Belgian launching drives past South China Sea tankers is a reminder that soft power now travels in Nike polos and private jets. When he signs for 68 in Doha while European pensioners shiver at home, the moral is clear: the weather may be apocalyptic, but the appearance fee is tax-free.
Back in Belgium, Colsaerts has become an accidental cultural Rorschach test. The Flemish see him as proof their region can produce global excellence without French subtitles; Walloons counter that he grew up near Brussels, ergo they can claim half the prize money. Meanwhile, the EU Parliament passes another resolution on “strengthening European identity,” blissfully unaware that identity currently wears FootJoys and speaks with a slight Antwerp drawl.
The darker joke, of course, is that Colsaerts keeps grinding precisely because golf refuses to offer the tidy redemption arc we crave. In an age when every Instagram story demands a hero’s-journey filter, he persists as a living rejoinder: sometimes the dragon wins, the princess ghosts you, and the endorsement deal gets rerouted to a 22-year-old Scandinavian with better launch-monitor numbers. And yet he tees it up again, week after week, because the alternative—an honest accounting of what it costs to chase windmills with graphite shafts—is far more terrifying than any water hazard.
So when, inevitably, Colsaerts contends again on a windswept links in Scotland or a humidity-drenched morning in Malaysia, remember you are not merely watching a golfer. You are observing a portable allegory for late capitalism: immense natural gifts leveraged against diminishing returns, set to a soundtrack of polite gallery applause and the faint whir of drone cameras. Should he finally win another big one, the headlines will trumpet a “comeback.” The subtext will read: “See? The system still works.”
It doesn’t, of course. But at least the man can still stripe a 3-wood 300 yards and make the ruin look graceful. In 2024, that may be the closest thing to hope we’re officially allowed.
