Sungai Long, Luckiest Day and Bad Caddies

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Based on our previous experience with Sungai Long the conclusion was nice course, crap service. And there has been no changes since.

But firstly – more optimistically – the game at Sungai Long recently will forever be rated as the luckiest day of our collective lives.

I am usually not a firm believer of luck – but thanks to today, I am now pretty sure there’s some sort of lucky counter up there that’s helping us out.

a) My first drive was a hook into the trees on the way to OB – and yet it spilled out nicely onto the fairway.

b) Twice, my playing partner’s drives were all headed into oblivion only for the trees to spit them out.

c) My playing partner skulled his ball from the bunker, zipped over the green over our heads, hit the stationary cart parked opposite and dropped to about 8 feet from the hole.

d) My 10th drive was an exact same drive as my first, but this time, the hook hit the SIDE of the cart path (where the stones were angled at a 45 degree angle), and bounced so hard to the opposite direction, that it landed smack in the middle of the fairway, about 20 meters from the green, which technically made it my first 300 meter drive.

e) A few drives after that, my drive hit the cart path again on the left and bounced again onto the fairway, around 60 meters from the green.

f) And finally – on par 5, and hitting my 3 wood second shot to around 250 meters: the ball faded right and hit (again) the 45 degree angled road bank and bounced back left so hard  that it landed on the green around 10 feet from the hole! I missed the darn eagle but it was the easiest birdie of my life.

I mean one time, two times OK – but this was like constantly LUCKY. I should go and buy me some number.

Anyway even with such divine help, I could only limp to a 91 – Sungai Long has never been easy for me, but the caddies …. If Glenmarie caddies were a bunch of crooks, then Sungai Long caddies are a bunch of idiotic gerbils.

Actually, we expected that anyway yet it’s our fault for taking up the caddies. First, they only gave us one guy at the first tee, promising they will send us another one. It was only through the 3rd hole, that the guy came.

The first caddy didn’t really speak any English and his Malay was only very primitive, so communication was devilish difficult. He was constantly smoking so throughout the 18th, our buggy smelled like a tobacco factory. Not cool, even when we made it clear we didn’t want him to smoke, he would keep his smoke up his sleeves and drag it when we are hitting our shots.

Look – I am willing to overlook all these. Really, it’s our fault for not learning. He didn’t read any greens and was slow in getting our clubs. He was just a terrible caddy…but I don’t blame him. He’s just a labourer, who worked in maintaining the course but because Sungai Long couldn’t afford proper caddies, they just sort of promoted these labourers to become caddies. At least that is in our opinion, since he would stop by and chat with the labourers all the time in (I think) Bangladeshi.

But what we cannot overlook is this: At the end, we go, alright, let’s just give him RM30 because we are kind. As in, he is ABSOLUTELY, PAINFULLY USELESS. Yet, because of our stupid culture of tolerance and kindness that my parents had instilled in me, I was still compassionate enough to give that money to him.

And he looks back and says bluntly in barely intelligible Malay, “You should be giving me RM50. That is standard, boss”.

We were like, WTF?

As in W.T.F.??!

I wanted to retort, yeah, standard if we get standard caddies and not some sort of parasitical organism that happens to be growing at the back of my buggy and smoking the crap out of his life the entire game!

I know Sungai Long is basically going down the toilet, but this is truly humiliating. I bet if Jack Nicklaus knew what they are doing to the club  he designed, he would be telling them to close it down and turn it into a cattle farm.

Glenmarie’s Thieving Caddy

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It’s been a while since my last post!

The thing is, the amount of golf played this year has been absolutely minuscule – since my second son came out around Christmas, it has been almost six months, and the amount of golf I’ve played is probably – 4 or 5 rounds, I can’t really recall. Only in the past 4 weeks I’ve managed to play twice – 2 weeks ago I played in KGNS Kelana Course after laying off for months and promptly scored 83, my best score for a long time. This included 8 pars, 2 double bogeys and 8 bogeys. And this was walking the course, with the last 4 holes played with an excruciating cramp in my left leg.

This week, managed to play a round at the Valley course in Glenmarie and scored around 92. I played the front at 43 and just had a bad streak in the back 9 with a double, triple, triple scored due to bad breaks and over clubbing. I was hitting my driver and irons way better than I was hitting in KGNS but that’s how golf works you know. Sometimes you play badly and score well and sometimes you score badly and you play well.

Glenmarie has always been a little of a sore course for me. The course itself is ok, but the management of the course is just stupid. It’s stupid. Go read the reviews of the course in this blog and you will find I have no issues with the course, but with the people running it and the people in it.

This round, we had a caddy who was a little too chatty for my liking. He seemed very eager to talk, and asked us if we were betting and such. I said, just a bit, nothing big. Then in a few holes, he cracked some jokes which were just a little off, I felt. Like he was high on drugs or something. He didn’t do anything bad but he didn’t do anything good either – he was bad at reading greens and basically, not extremely helpful at all. No biggie.

We tipped him after the round and finished the game and left. After lunch my buggy mate texted me and asked if I was missing any money. I wasn’t sure, since I didn’t even know how much I had in my wallet to begin with. He said he lost RM500. As in, missing from his wallet. I told him to call up the club and check on the caddy because the caddy seemed very off. It’s just a gut feeling, you know, when you don’t have proof.

Sure enough, a few days on, Glenmarie calls back and they said they have recovered back RM400 from that caddy.

Wait – ok, thank you Glenmarie for being prompt, but what about the RM100? And What did you do to that caddy? Did you make sure you fired him and ensure he never ever gets any job within a 100 mile radius of a golf course again and spend his entire life sifting through shit to get his daily meals? What is your hiring policy? Is it going to change? How do you ensure the peace of mind of golfers if your caddies are thieves?

I think Glenmarie should make a public statement on this to ensure golfers are at peace with their game in the club. They should publish it and say that they apologise for hiring thieves and that they will do everything they can to shore up their hiring process to make sure these drug addicts don’t see the light of day again.

Also – they should give us a free round at least as an apology.

So Gilagofers going to Glenmarie – BEWARE! You might be having a thief in your buggy with you!