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The verdict for KRPM’s fate is….

Safe.

But same can’t be said about the GC’s job.

Like all good members, I decided to miss out Tiger’s last day at CIMB (which turned out to be a heck of a day for Nick Watney and his hot missus), to attend the critical EGM to vote on KRPM’s future. There were a couple of resolutions in there, which I won’t bore my readers here. Basically the first one is saying to ammend something in the constitutional rule. Rule 36.3 or something. Then the next one was to get some professional guys to value our club. The other one was to see whether we want to sell it, either 36 holes or 9 holes, for some greedy developer.

Now I obviously am not sure if I understood it correctly, someone probably will correct me, but that’s what I think I was supposed to vote for. Which I didn’t. Because like all EGMs it started VERY late, and the room was too small to accomodate everyone, and the guy next to me (bless him for his good intentions) smelled suspiciously like he had too much to drink.

The turnout? Here’s the view when I turned into the road leading to KRPM.

Upon reaching to register my name:

Yup, that’s the freaking line. Someone told me, look you need long pants and shoes! I am like, are you serious? Cuz, I’m dressed as a typical china-man, which constitutes 80% of this club anyways right?

And so I had to head to the wonderful golf shop that had so much business and buy a  nice RM60 golf pants and a 300RM shoes. Yes. RM300. It’s a nice shoe though. It’s called TRUE Linkswear and I immediately LIKED it.

I bought the one at the top. Finally, they make golf shoes that you can go out with. Anyway, I thought I could splurge a little, seeing that I missed out Tiger and his 4th placing at CIMB. I was gonna spend the money anyways!

Anyhoos, back to the EGM. After the chaotic registration and the delay from 2:30 pm to 4:15, we finally convened in the main hall, which I think can probably sit 500 – 600 people but it turned out to have like, I don’t know 1500? 2000? I don’t know. A lot of human beings. And some of them had shorts. And japanese slippers. Dang the guy who tricked me into buying the funky looking golf shoes!

I’ll be honest with you. After being there from 2:30 and hanging out like a chimp with nothing to do for an hour plus, I wasn’t too happy at all. And a lot of people were pretty pissed. I stayed long enough to listen and do my customary hollering and heckling but by 5:30 pm, we were still stuck with people talking about the dang Rule 36.3, which some considered “sacred” and cannot be changed. The only thing sacred was my stomach growling with hunger.

But looking at the people gathered there and the amount of heckling towards Arthur, our president everytime he opened his mouth, I was certain there won’t be any sale anytime in the future. Here’s the breakdown of people attending:

1. People who want to sell at the current price – 1%

2. People who wants to sell, but not at this price – 98%

3. People who don’t want to sell even if you put a shotgun to the head of their first born – 1%

I am part of that 98% group, who feels that, look, if you were to give me a really really ridiculously good offer, like maybe 150K upwards, heck, it’s a no-brainer. Everyone has a price. But not at this basement price they were talking about. It’s a no-brainer as well. Our club is worth a whole lot more than that.

However, the 3rd group was pretty convincing in their rabid devotion to the club. They will never sell, not for a billion dollars. Either way, I’m pretty happy it turned out ok, and that KRPM (for now) is safe. Who knows, maybe 2 years down the road, the offer will be something we can’t refuse?

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Tiger vs Rory

Did any of you know that there was apparently a “Duel and Jinsha Lake” yesterday? It’s a mano-e-mano, one to one matchup between the world number 1 and world number 2.

World number 2 gets 2 million USD. World number 1 gets 1 million USD. I know, there’s something a bit wrong here, so I am guessing world number 3 gets…?

Anyways, Jinsha lake is located somewhere in Henan, China. Which is somewhere in China. Anyhoos, I managed to accidentally catch the game on TV as I came back from lunch. A couple of calls to clients moved all my meetings two hours later and I managed to catch the majority of the so-called Duel.

Which.Was.A.Waste.Of.Time.

Not so much that Tiger lost, I think -4 to Rory’s -5, but the way they lost it. They didn’t give a crap. It was exhibition. They got a couple of million bucks just to show up, and even though the commentator said it was for ‘pride’, I am not buying it. 2 million bucks is more than they will get if they won a regular tour tournament. Heck, it’s larger than a major event’s purse! All they need to do was play 18 holes. It’s equivalent to a consultant working on a project for 3 months to get 300,000RM, or work 3 days to get 600K RM. Which one would be better?

Tiger played like I’ve never seen before. Without a damn. He just wasn’t locked in. When he hit a bad shot, he didn’t care. When he hit a good shot, he didn’t care. No fist pumps, no anger, no slamming of clubs, no clenched fist. It was like his mind was on Mickey Mouse playing the ukelele. You could see how disengage he was, when rory would talk to him facing him, he never looked back at Rory, just stare into the ground ahead and talked back a bit. After a while, I think Rory said, “Darn it Tiger, just play along a bit or we will lose this stupidly easy paycheck, will ya??!?”

Rory? Heck, I don’t know, he was playing well, but he was just walking about, not really caring much as well and I think purposely missing a few putts to keep it close. He was a lot better than Tiger, granted.

The only interesting thing was their conversations to each other as they sauntered along, collecting a few thousand bucks with each step they took. Rory was talking about the weather and Tiger was saying it was a hell lot better than the hellhole called Malaysia last week (not in those words)…and he was saying he was literally dripping as he addressed the ball in KL. (in those exact words).

Another interesting bit was this humongously irritating on-course chinese interviewer, who literally stopped Tiger and Rory while they were still playing and asked stupid questions like: “How do you think you are hitting it?” “How is the weather?” “What color underwear are you wearing?” He was classic hilarious. The look on Tiger’s face when he was first accosted as he was walking to his second shot, as if “WTF is this china man?” The very next hole, the hole he swung his driver dramatically out of his hands in a hook shot, he strode off to his ball fuming. And this annoying chinaman interviewer hops in front of him and says: “What do you think of your shot?” Tiger at that moment was a milisecond away from slamming his Nike club into the head of this guy but stopped himself with two sentences: “2 Million prize money. 100 billion losses in PR”. He smoothed his face and smiled forcefully and through visibly grinding teeth said, “I don’t know, I havent seen it yet.”

Ah, the beauty of insensitive and utterly clueless chinese interviewers!

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CIMB Classic and Tiger Woods

Well I suppose you couldn’t keep Gilagolf away from Tiger Woods, not when the guy is back in malaysia after a 13 year absence. I mean, he’s like the Haley’s comet. I don’t know what prompted him to come down to this backwater country for golf, probably the 5 million appearance fee and the no-cut 48 person event had something to do with it.

I don’t often go and watch golf on the course…I rather be playing it, but this is Tiger. And this is Thursday. And the crowd. Was. Nuts.

Thursday crowd mind you.

It was pretty hard to see Tiger, but there are some tips to catching Tiger properly.

Predict where he will end up. He was playing absolutely great at his driving, so we just needed to predict where his drive would end up. Nick Watney was ahead of him, and I gauged that he would be about 15 meters in front of Nick when he teed up. So while everyone was at the tee box on 18th, I settle myself at a nook where no one was there, where I predicted he would hit. A larger crowd was at around where Nick hit his shot.

Bam, Tiger’s ball ended up absolutely smack at the distance I was sitting, hence I had a great view of his second shot in the last hole.

Unfortunately, those CIMB volunteers decided to camp right in front of me with their QUIET signs to block my view when Tiger hit his shot. I wanted to murder that imbecile CIMB volunteer.

Another way to get a good shot is to predict his walking path. Then stand there and take the damn photo!

Overall he played great in the back nine and gave us a lot to cheer for. Of course, a few of us were hoping one of his wayward tee shot would hit us on the head so we could get an autograph (do you know how much that is worth??!), but he played too well. And the crowd was just berserk.

I managed to capture a video of his chip attempt that nearly eagled on the 17th. Otherwise, most of my shots are all pretty far away. The video is actually crap quality, you can’t even see the damn ball, but I’m putting it in because at around 0:22, the old uncle next to me started to hit on one of the CIMB volunteer, who is young enough to be his daughter. He says: “I remember you from Maybank Open. Wow, you are always here for golf events. When is the next one you will be at ah?” In response, the girl gave a nervous look around and scurried away.

Anyways, it’s ridiculous fighting with the crowd at Tiger World. He truly is bigger than golf.

Another interesting sight was Nick Watney. He had this really hot looking caddie by his side. Which was really interesting, because since I couldn’t get a view of Tiger much, the hot caddie was the next most interesting thing on the course.

Who is the hot caddy? I don’t know, but I think likely his wife, Amber Watney, who had caddied before for him I guess during the mickey mouse rounds in Augusta. She’s the niece of another pro golfer so I guess she knows what she’s doing. Check out Amber Watney below:

She’s the number 34. YOW-ZAH.

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Tiger Woods in Malaysia

Suffice to say, that at this very moment, the greatest player in the history of our known universe is about 25km away, hacking away at one of the courses that Gilagolf had hacked before. Some comments have mentioned I am a rabid fanboy of Tiger. What else is there to support in golf? Your spine? Unfortunately, unless someone miraculously reads this article and take pity on me, I didn’t get any tickets to this year’s arguably biggest golf event. So I’ll just have to watch him like everyone else, from the TV. And annoyingly, we still have that EGM issue with Rahman Putra happening this Sunday as well. Damn you, golf club!

He’s teeing up with our prime minister even right now as I write, and I heard, opting to use only a putter for every shot so that our PM can at least keep pace with him in driving. I guess our PM has quite a lot of time to be accomodating, what’s with the country going through our best golden years both socially, politically and economically. I’m sure there’s no reason to worry about that small, miniscule, little thing called the GE13, or our country has gone to the bollocks for the past couple of years. Sure, let’s just tee up with Tiger Woods, who represents the greatest role model in golf and extracurricular activities.

I’m not bitter at all that the PM gets to tee up with Tiger Woods. I am sure the PM teed up with Rory McIlroy as well when he came. You mean he didn’t? Why the hell would he tee up with Tiger then? Oh yeah, because Tiger is bigger than golf, that’s why. Suck it, Mr Toby.

Anyways, predictions? I really doubt Tiger is driven to win in this CIMB (he pronounces it as See-im-bee) tournament, playing in possible the crappiest course against the crappiest opponents in the crappiest weather ever. I think by the end on the first round, he’s going to be sweating so much, and fainting and saying Malaysian weather sucks and that’s why bloody Vijay Singh rejected this  country in favor of Fiji. He’ll be in the top 10, but he won’t be winning. As far as Tiger goes, this is like 2nd gear work out for him. He’s just here to kill time and to see our PM play golf. You can see his reaction to our PM’s tee off below here:

Ah Tiger. The only one who dares to donkey-laugh at our PM’s golf skills.

All the best and win one on Malaysia soil!

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Rahman Putra or Tiger?

Well, we all know Tiger Woods is coming to Malaysia.

And we all know that Gilagolf is a rabid fan of Tiger. Because, again, he is the only reason why golf exist in ESPN highlights. I’m not going to go into another long harangue on why Tiger is bigger than the game, but here it is, he is coming to Malaysia, to Mines for the CIMB classic at the end of this month.

Obviously, I was prepared to go.

However.

For those gilagolfers in the know, we’ve seen our share of land grabbing of recent times. The golf courses in Malaysia are no longer invincible to development, and of recent years, we’ve seen courses like Kajang Hill, KGSAAS, IOI Palm Garden, Venice Hills and some others fade away into the oblivion of property development.

Recently, my other club, KGNS also got hit with some foul play of government getting back the land. Sorry, my legal capabilities is next to a chipmunk so I have no freaking clue how it happened.

Now, of course, Rahman Putra, of which I’ve been a member for years, is faced with a critical crisis. Some sections of people have made a move to look to sell the club out to some property developer. They are looking to buy over our membership and build condominiums over our beloved, hallowed course that we’ve dug up for years.

How much are they paying? Not enough. According to our quack calculations, we’re looking at 279 acres, which is 279×43560 = 12, 153, 240 square feet. Our quack calculator states that that area itself should go for at least RM60, so that means 729M, divided by 4500 members, it’s roughly 160K per person. Now even if it goes for RM40 – 50, we should be seeing a whole lot more than what they are offering us now. And that too will be a big IF, if guys like me want to sell. I love the club actually, it’s heck of a convenient and it has a big swimming pool for my 10 future kids. Plus it’s not like I have a big need for money. I actually do, but I’m trying to sound macho. OK, if you give me an offer I cant refuse, Don Corleone, I might be bought over.

The problem here is that there will be a vote for resolution in the EGM. They require 3/5 of the people present to vote to pass. These guys who want to sell already have quite a large contingent, I hear. Why would they want to sell? I don’t know. Maybe they are too old to play golf and want to cash out? Who knows? All I know is that the current price isn’t what I’d want to sell Rahman for. Would I sell out the club in the future? Hey let’s be frank, if someone dropped 500K for you to sell a golf club membership….come on. Seriously.

So when is this EGM? Now, you guessed it. Sunday, on the final day of CIMB classic, the day when we all expect Tiger to be the last flight. Oh great. Don’t think it’s a coincidence. I am sure they knew this, in order to get fewer fence sitters like myself so they can vote to go for the sale. But what can be done? Go for Tiger or secure the future of Rahman Putra?

Such tough tough decisions we have to make in life.

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Gilagolf is out for a few months

Well, not the blog, but rather the player.

Reinjured my wrist today trying to hack away at a ball in KGPA. To begin with, my wrist had never been doing well since one half month ago. It’s the left wrist, so I needed to strap it really tight and hence no wrist cock. I’ve been seeing a lot of pulls, because (I think) I’m dropping my club too early in the swing and it just goes round and my right hand turns over then. At least, that’s my assumption.

So I’ve been playing a lot of compensating golf: Aim right, hook it back. Problem is about 30% of the time I flush it straight and it goes into OB or somewhere in the woods where I need to hack again, and thus re-stressing my already stressed wrist. Now I know how Duval feels playing like a hack knowing you can play a much better game.

Anyway, the doc says it’s an overstressed tendon issue on the wrist, so it’s swollen up and I can’t turn it without feeling pain, and I went to the sensei at Seapark (Oriental something, pretty good), who massaged, put in a herbal wrap on it and advised me to knock off golf for at least 2 months.

What happened? Possible a mixture of a bad swing and a bad way in carrying my kid. Kid is more than 7 kg now and I must have twisted something when I carried him wrongly one of those times, trying to manuever his squirming body into the blasted car seat.

So, no golf till December at least, but I’ll keep updating the blog on anything to do with Tiger and stuff.

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We hate Love Part II.

I thought this was done and dusted. But after reading the ESPN article, I’ll have to say this: Davis Love III will be used as a bad word from now on. Here’s how we use it:

“What? I don’t give a flying Davis Love III whether you know how to do it or not, just do it! Davis Love III!”

“I just had the most Davis Love III-ing amazing time tonight.”

“Davis Love III’s sakes! You can’t even do a simple thing like that??!?”

“That mother-Davis Love III-er is really going to get punched in the face one day.”

Davis Love III captained the US team as how he played: spineless, courageless and absolutely in mind-numbing, mentally crippling fashion. He’s the villain for US, and he will always be known as the absolute worst captain of all time. He’s finished. From here on, Davis Love III will be selling hotdogs for a living, nobody should come within a 10 foot pole of this guy.

US would have won, if they had been captained by this instead:

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Gilagolf prediction was right…sort of.

Martin Kaymer

At the beginning we predicted Euro to beat US. – Correct

Then we predicted US to win Euro at the last day – Wrong

Then we predicted that Love sucked and put Tiger in the inconsequential last match, which was exactly correct.

So what went wrong for the US, who in golf terms, just suffered a shocking Adam Scott collapse in the final day?

Steve Stricker is absolutely useless. Furyk didn’t get it going and his monkey swing wasn’t going to hold up under pressure, hence a bogey-bogey finish to cost the US the win.

And of course, Davis Love, who would go down as the biggest idiot of the century to put Tiger at the back of the pack when it did not matter at all.

So many stupid people in the US team, they deserved to lose. But who could have predicted Bubba Watson getting bamboozled so early by Luke Donald? Luke Donald’s drive is about half the length of Bubba and yet he managed to steamroll Bubba. It’s simple. Davis Love never used his brains. Never put Bubba up front. His mental strength is as strong as a retarded duck. I mean, he’s the same guy that said The US Open course was “too tough for him”. He gives up so easily and gets discouraged quickly.

Luke Donald

The rest like Webb Simpson and Keegan Bradley did what they could, they had a good campaign. Phil had a so-so campaign but with Justin Rose bombing putts from every where, what else can you do? Snedeker, the 11.4 million dollar man was worthless as well as far as effort was concerned.

Was Woods also culpable? Yes of course. He played like a twit. But he should have gone first and gave US some breathing space. Why the crap would you put Bubba in the first flight??! And then followed by two Ryder Cup Rookies? If any fault should be laid, it should be on Davis Love the III, the absolute worse Ryder cup captain in history. His captain picks were crap, and discriminatory (choosing the old fashioned Stricker and Furyk over the more flamboyant Hunter Mahan and Rickie Fowler), and throughout the week, he demonstrated leadership as strong as a potato chip drench in urine. Davis Love absolutely should be sacked and deported to Puerto Rico and have his citizenship stripped forever.

So ends the golf season. And probably won’t be posting for some time, unless I get to play a course I never played before.

Hope you enjoyed the Gila Ryder coverage!