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Orna Golf & Country Club

Introduction

Melaka has always been somewhat of a hidden gem for Malaysia Golf Courses. For such a small state, it boasts of 4 well known courses in Ayer Keroh, A Famosa, Tiara Melaka and Orna Golf Club. There’s also one more obscure one called Golden Valley course which is along the highway, which we don’t really know anything about.

And of course, the great thing about Melaka is that the courses are all located within Bubba Watson Drive from each other (meaning within 300 – 400 meters, give and take. We obviously failed our maths, but it sounds nice: Bubba Drive). With each courses so close, organizing a 36 hole blitz is a piece of cake. Orna – Tiara Melaka – Ayer Keroh are options. A Famosa is a little out of the way though.

We decided on Orna simply because many of us have not played there before, and from the website (again, we say with some caution, having experience the inordinate amount of BS encountered in these so-called websites), they seem to be a little full of themselves, having served as the Davidoff qualifying school venue for 2001 – 2003, which until now, I can only relate to Davidoff as the deodorant I put in my armpits every morning. At least, it isn’t as full of crap as some of the information on some golf club sites; this actually served to be quite informational. I won’t repeat it here, but the designer is Andy Dye, the brother, I believe of Pete Dye. Now if you haven’t heard of Pete Dye, you probably heard of the famous course he designed: The TPC Sawgrass. If you haven’t heard of it, you probably know about the famous 17th on the Stadium Course. If you haven’t, you should just give up golf, wear a tutu and take up ballet instead, because you’ll be very good at it.

While Andy ain’t Pete, we still were pretty excited nonetheless to try out this so-called ‘championship quality’ course.

Travel (2/5)

Like the notorious Tiara Melaka, signs leading to the golf course is as scarce as blue spotted jackals.  For some reason, perhaps due to it being a national heritage, Melaka refuses to put signs up to direct tired golfers coming from KL to Tiara or Orna, or perhaps those cheapskate clubs refuse to pay the Melaka town board to put these signs up. So you need to trust your instinct, or now, in this time and age, the good old GPS.

Orna Location Map

Turn off the Ayer Keroh exit, if you’re coming down from KL. Please tell me that you know how to get to the North South Highway bound for JB and Singapore. If you don’t, perhaps you should ask your mother’s permission for reading stuff on the internet, and go back to studying for your Std 3 tests. I’m kidding. This is a family friendly blog. But I am still not gonna direct you to the North south since it’s obvious you don’t know how to drive.

Anyways, once you’re off, go past the toll and head straight on, until you see the zoo and the Ayer Keroh golf course on your left. Then stay left, and at the main interchange, turn left, go straight all the way, past Tiara Melaka Golf Course on your left, and about 2 km later, Orna is there for you!

Price (4/5)

RM59 per person. Yep. There’s a promotion and yet again, our stupid Top premier voucher booklet is useless, since it’s more expensive with the voucher. Although it’s a dumb pricing strategy, it’s still a ridiculously low price to pay for a round of golf (later, we found from Tiara Melaka, with the voucher is only RM44!! Man, I love MELAKA!). This is good pricing, but then again, RM59 for a piece of cowdung in the middle of nowhere, like TUDM or Frasers might make you wish you invested that RM59 into buying discarded bottle caps instead. As we found out later, thankfully, Orna does not resemble a piece of dung, so it’s definitely worth the price.

First thoughts

I don’t really know what ORNA means, but I suppose it’s supposed to be some Greek sounding name for beauty or something. In my opinion, it’s probably derived from the desperate shouts of golfers who are trying to clear water, bunkers, wastelands in this course to put it on the green: “ON! ON –AH!!” with the ‘ah’ colloquially used by chinamen uncles who think they can clear 230 m of water to put 2-on to the par 5 greens, and failing miserably for the 4,567th time.

Anyways, we teed it up on the back nine (West Course). We avoided the mickey mouse North Course (as was told to us) and decided the championship combination of East and West course was where the bang for the buck was.

Standing on the first tee, it was a short par 4 that had a slight dogleg right. Immediately, you can see the undulations on the fairway, and know that this is NOT a Ginnifer Course, and it’s probably going to eat you up the way KRPM eats up golfers, gargles their blood and spits out the carcass later.

Service (3/5)

Not much experience with the service, except our buggy was awful and we needed to ‘Flintstoned’ our way (using our legs to help move the vehicle) in the last couple of holes. As there were no living souls in the course except for our flight and probably one or two more, we didn’t have any congestion as well, except for the first few holes when this couple took their own sweet time, and played as if they were just waiting for rapture to come. We’ll give a middle score for this one.

Fairways (2/5)

From a far the fairway looks to be in a pretty shape. But on closer inspection, you’ll find it in a below average state, mostly evidenced by the infamous bald spots. Sparsely growing, the Bermuda fairway was mostly pockmarked by sandy spots here and there. On the regular turf without the bald mark, the Bermuda grass was just HARD. As in, for habitual diggers like myself, I end up bouncing back up the grass and turn my ball right to left with a closed face. At least that is what I think. It usually happens in a blink of an eye, and before I know it, my poor golf ball is skittering away to the left into the drink. And ORNA punishes a lot of right to left misses, due to some ridiculous undulation. You will probably never get a flat stance in Orna, so your iron game better come prepared.

Greens (2/5)

Like the fairways, it wasn’t that the greens started out bad, but simply because of the lack of maintenance. Bald spots littered almost all the greens, speed was inconsistent, sometimes slow, sometimes faster (but still slow!), and while the undulation and breaks were fun; still, the lack of maintenance really annoyed us. Another thing, and this has nothing to do with the ratings; don’t even think about putting off the green. I usually practice that, if there’s about a meter of grass to clear before the green, I’d putt it. I’ve done that in other courses, in Rahman Putra cow grass even, and it works. Not in Saujana. And now, definitely not in Orna. The grass around the green literally catches the ball and chokes the spin out of it and spins the ball away from the targeted line. Again, this is more of a characteristic than a feature, but the greens themselves offer an underwhelming experience for us hackers.

Rough ( 3/5)

We spent an inordinate amount of time in the rough. This is primarily due to the undulating fairways, and as well as the gigantic bunkers sprinkled liberally over the course. The rough was generally ok, it wasn’t very difficult to escape from it, but Orna’s bunkers are really a feature itself, and offered some very interesting challenges. Starting from hole 10th, you need to navigate across twin bunkers on the fairways and fronting the green. Even on the par 5 11th, a sandy stretch of bunkers await the wayward hooker on their approach to the green. The index 2 14th is a monstrous par 4 at almost 400 meters, but with a Sarlac sized bunker smack in the middle of the fairway, which one of our unfortunate hacker managed to find enroute to a triple bogey. This is an extremely testing par 4, with a driver and 3 wood to barely find the front of the green.

Again the par 4 15th also has a gigantic greenside bunker which took our guys 2 – 3 shots to extricate.

By now, we had the grim feeling that while water was more or less a feature for Orna, the bunkers were the real culprit to high scores. And nothing is more distinct that the GARGANTUAN strip of bunker found in the par 5 16th, at the side of the water. It’s almost 100 meters long and I had the misfortune of slamming into it with my second shot hybrid, and could only get out in 3 to six on and two putt for a triple. Yikes. The ending holes are memorable, with each having strips of bunker hugging the water, and as you will see later, has an impressionable aesthetic.

The issue is that the bunkers are not very well maintained. In fact, playing into the 8th par 3 and landing into the bunker, my second shot skulled the ball due to the HARD mud under the sand. My third dug too shallow and popped the ball into the water on the par 5 preceeding hole. Drop for fifth, two putted for a quadruple bogey and lost the game. This wasn’t a one-off…lots of the bunkers were in need of proper maintenance. If you’re hitting from Orna’s bunkers, be careful of the hard mud underneath, it’s death to most hackers.

Aesthetics ( 3/5)

Orna is one of those courses where you hate it or love it. The one thing good about the aesthetics is that it really offers an open course for you to view. And we’re very partial to such a view, with the undulating fairways, undulating greens, and bunkers spread around the course, you can really look and say the design is quite nice, given what they had to work with. Especially nice (as long as you avoid it) are the bunker strips around the lakes, and from some good elevated tee boxes, it was an enjoyable view.

And of course, the signature hole 12th on the West Course, a’la the 17th at Sawgrass, Andy Dye copies his brother and gives us the closest resemblance. This is the island green very similar to the one in Sawgrass, a 157 m shot from the blue tee to green. Standing on the tee shot, the whole conversation will surround on the key question: “Eh, what iron you use ah?”. In fact, we like this hole so much, we’re gonna give an aerial shot from the recently launched Gilagolf satellite camera.

So aesthetic wise, there’s much to enjoy…until the weather gets the better of you. The advantage becomes a disadvantage when you hit the 10 am – 12 noon stretch because Orna is HOT. Barely any mature trees surrounding the course, it becomes a killer at the final holes, when you play that stretch of index 7,9,3, 11 and 5 on the east course. And mind you, that index 11 is a elevated 170 m tee shot to a small green with water fronting and that Sarlac bunker waiting to chomp your (golf) balls. So that stretch is really a tough one. If only Orna had managed to keep some trees before chopping all of them down, it would actually be quite a beautiful looking course, especially the design itself is worth mentioning. I don’t know why there are so many mature trees in Tiara Melaka next door or Ayer keroh golf course down the road, but Orna has almost none.

So bring LOTs of water, because you’re going to a fried duck by the time you are done with Orna.

Fun Factor ( 3/5)

The start of the game was quite fun. We hit the west course, and getting past hole 10 and 11, we reached the famed 12th, the copycat of TPC Sawgrass and played good shots in. An eight iron should actually suffice, but it’s just that the water really psychos you.

The fairways are reasonably generous, but slicers do beware, many of the holes have OB right, so take a healthy aim to the left…except that the undulation often bounces your ball into the water or Sarlac bunkers.  The undulating fairways are also another feature to deal with. Depending on where your ball lands, you can either get another 30-40 m roll or a -5 meter roll, as you watch in anger as it hits the upslope of the undulation and rolls pathetically back. And also, the undulation slopes towards the hazards, and in more than one occasion, notably the par 4 10th, where slight draw of the ball lands on the wrong side of the slope and it will bound merrily into the waiting water.

In fact, there’s probably not one spot in the course where you’ll find an even lie, so it truly will test your skill, patience and resistance to start chopping your 7-iron into the fairway and howl in anguish.

The East Course plays shadier, but by then the heat had really gotten to us so much so that we’ve had mirages of Oompaloompahs serving us ice cold Coke and ice-cream chocolate cakes on each green. A notable hole is the horrendous par 5 7th, which demands a good tee shot, and another to the landing area before an accurate to the elevated green.

The course does have character in each of the holes, but I swear as I was chopping out of the largest bunker in the world on the par 5 16th, I’d think some golfers probably didn’t make it out of the bunker alive and had been buried there for posterity’s warning.

Was Orna fun? In part due to the design and undulation. But the lack of shade, trees and the exposure to the sun feels like we’ve just landed in the Sahara and by the last few holes, just couldn’t wait to get our sun-baked bodies into the clubhouse.

Conclusion

As mentioned, there is a love it or hate it feeling for Orna. Some liked the challenge and the undulation and the bunkers, while others probably would want to avoid such torture and sadistic course in the future. For me, the driving was doing fine, as I hit 10 fairways. But with only 2 GIRs, it really brings to pressure the approach shots,  and putting (both my GIRs, I three putted for bogeys). Undulation and bunkers really do play a huge part in Orna, and it’s definitely not an easy course to play in, unlike the neighbouring, friendly Tiara Melaka. It suffers from the lack of maintenance, but it’s a course I wouldn’t mind playing on again.

The good: Pricing is a big advantage, with RM59, it’s worth the travel; undulating greens, fairways add to the challenge of gigantic, Sarlac bunkers; the island green 12th is worth playing for the closest resemblance of TPC Sawgrass 17th; interesting “Mr Dye” design worthy of it’s boast as a championship looking course.

The bad: Maintenance is lacking, causing the fairway to be as hard as tarred road; bunkers will be unavoidable, but it’s densely packed with mud under the sand; without trees, after a while, those Oompaloompahs with coke will hopefully get to you before you collapse in dehydration and carted away to the Melaka hospital.

The skinny: 22 of 40 divots (55%). Orna faces the challenge of the nearby Ayer Keroh and Tiara Melaka, but it stands on its own. It doesn’t force idiotic caddies on you the way Ayer Keroh does, and the character of the course is definitely different from the much friendlier Tiara Melaka. And of course, the bunkers and undulation gives it a distinct feel and personality. If only it wasn’t so dang hot, it would have been a great recommendation. As it is, we’re a little on the fence; love it or hate it, there are some holes you definitely will have fun in, so it’s a recommendation if you haven’t tried it yet. After that, it’s up to you whether to return or not!

Orna GCC  East + West Course

Orna GCC Information

Address: Batu 16, Jalan Gapam,
Ladang Gapam, Bemban 77200 Jasin,
Melaka, Malaysia.

Contact: +606-5210333

Fax: +606-5210222

Email: ogcc@ornaresort.com.my

Website: http://www.ornaresort.com.my

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Royal Selangor Golf Club – East Course

Introduction

Note: I was informed by a contact in RSGC that the 1st Nine Old Course and the 2nd Nine New Course constitutes what is known as the ‘East Course’, while the 2nd Nine Old and 1st Nine New is the ‘West Course’, so for the ease of rememberance, this article will be on the 1O/2N, East Course of RSGC.

When Gilagolf started 4 years back, we started with a simple mission: To give readers honest reviews on the golf courses we play on, scrubbing away the prestige, the pre-conceived ideas of the course, the traditions, the marketing drivel and getting down to the facts: how hackers in their teens to 20s handicap play the course.

Through this journey, we’ve faced many disagreements from loyal members from courses such as KRTU, Bukit Unggul, TUDM etc, but these reviews remain mainly in the realm of personal opinion or experience; it’s by no means set in stone. If the courses suck, then at least there’s an imperative to improve. If you don’t agree, what the heck, it doesn’t really matter what a bunch of 20 plus handicappers who duffs, hacks and digs golf courses around Malaysia think, does it? Gilagolf provides what no other sites out there provided (which was the reason for the inception of this blog anyway), that is a look from the eyes of not-very-good golfers (hackers), which constitutes possibly 99% of the fearless joes who deign to pick up this blasted, cursedly addictive game of golf.

Through this journey, we have come upon courses we never thought we’d play on: Saujana, Glenmarie, Mines, Tropicana. Prestigious clubs like KGSAS, Bukit Jawi and Clearwater didn’t get too great a review while gems like Meru Valley, Staffield were uncovered. Our favourtie Bangi also makes it in the top-10 list.

And now for the 59th course to be reviewed, we’ve added Royal Selangor Golf Club, the country’s most prestigious golf club, and possibly a cultural institution forming the very backbone of the modern society in Malaysia. How will we approach such a reverent subject, as holy as the nation’s constitution itself?

Why, by hacking it of course.

Travel (4/5)

Traveling to RSGC is a simple feat: every golfer in Malaysia probably knows where RSGC is: along Jalan Tun Razak, right behind RHB headquarters. From almost every sky scraper you’ll be able to find the former tin mine area designated eons ago by the government for one of the oldest golf course in Malaysia.

In case you’re still blur (and we have in one instance an intrepid fella in our group who mixed up RSGC and KGNS and went over to the latter, and who have since received such a resounding lecture on such criminal negligence of reasoning, that he no doubt will know where and what RSGC is for the remainder of his hopefully very long life), here’s the map.

But seriously, if you call yourself a golfer and have no idea where or what RSGC is, it’s probably time to explore another game like lawn bowl or curling, where you mop floors for a challenge.

Price (3/5)

We were brought in by a member – in fact, short of breaking in and climbing over the electric fence and illegally teeing off – you have no choice but to have a member bring you in. Thankfully, over the course of playing this game, we have made acquaintances that have been very useful. However, RSGC yields a hefty price even for the member guest. The green fees are over RM200 on a weekday (the website rates has probably not been updated since the last World War), and add in the caddy, and the tips, you’re looking at high RM200s to RM300 range. It’s still not as STUPID as some pricing like Mines or Datai, which can hit RM400 on a given day; and after all, RSGC has probably earned the right to charge these fees: we’re talking about the local Augusta, the national heritage; and we’re going to hack it up in our blasphemous interpretation of this divine game.

So really, it’s not too bad price to pay, just don’t expect hackers to play there often. For the novelty of 18 holes on the very course that Walter Hagen used to hack? Hey, a little premium for tradition doesn’t hurt.

First thoughts

We are going in without any knowledge or reverence to RSGC’s tradition. This might probably go down wrong with our purists readers (which is estimated to be 1% of readers to this hacker blog); but RSGC’s first impression is pretty flat. Literally flat. From the lounge, you can look outside across the practice green to the course and count the number of fluorescent yellow flag sticks (which to us is a smart idea) stuck all over the course. There’s not much elevation, or self contained holes; it plays like a traditional golf course: parallel fairways, bail out areas left and right and thankfully a healthy absence of the dreaded white OB stakes.

You can’t write about RSGC without first giving a little history lesson. Of course, in full knowledge that any history lesson would be the best way to tune off readers and put everyone to sleep, instead, I’ll direct you to a very good book called “An Informal History of The Royal Selangor Golf Club: A Royal Heritage”. You can probably buy it from the club or get it off a member. If not a condensed version is found in http://www.rsgc.com.my/history.htm. The website, however is sorely in need of restoration, since it somewhat resembles my first website project about my Westie Terrier back in 1996, but I doubt that’s their priority.

As for novelty, RSGC has on the record, as the second oldest golf club in Malaysia, with Taiping Golf Club pipping it as the oldest, when they were established as an 11 hole club in 1885. In fact, Taiping Golf Club is the oldest in Southeast asia. I heard that it has been shut down, unfortunately, and I can’t imagine which idiotic non-golfing descision maker would deem it anything less than a national crime to shutdown such a club. Anyways, RSGC has no problem on this, as this club is teeming with life. Even for a weekday, you will find many people on the grass only range (they deem range with mats for wimps and for golfers with as much self esteem as a piece of carrot), on the practice green and teeing up on the first…which kind of makes you wonder: don’t these flers have work? Until you realize that they are probably thinking the same thing about you.

Anyways, RSGC was established in 1893, a very interesting history ensued, surviving the war, restoration, relocation etc. It’s amazing to know that Lake Gardens also once had a 9 hole golf course and RSGC almost ended up taking that over. See, Malaysian history is so darn interesting when we don’t need to remember all the sultan’s similar names and whether the Bugis, Dutch, Portugese or Eskimoes came to colonise our beloved nation.

Service (5/5)

Except for the fact that you cannot use your phone in the main lounge (likely a Steve Williams look a like will dump your phone into the pond), the service is expectedly exampalary for a club with this much prestige. You really feel like you are part of history, sitting at the terrace or lounge, cross legged, wishing you had don on a pair of white Englishy pants and sipping some Englishy tea while chatting quietly in an Englishy way. Instead we were all in our oversized shirts and pants and looking like the chinamen we all were.

While the service was generally good, it is the caddy service that really take the cake. We usually don’t like caddies tagging along, one because there are actually very few good caddies in this world; and two, we suck at golf. With a gallery of caddies, it’s even worse. Especially if caddies are like those in KGNS, who are all single handicappers, who really pressure the dickens out of you and even at one point scolded me for messing up my shot…hey, thanks but no thanks.

But RSGC caddies are mainly senior guys who will lug your bag or manage your trolley for you, and give you excellent advice on course navigation. We all had A-grade caddies with us, and it makes a huge difference. I know my score still requires a calculator to add it all up and resembles an arithmetic nightmare, but think about it, it could have been a lot worse if not for some timely tips from my caddy, an old, wizened Yoda. His reading on the greens (and later you’ll find these greens devilishly fast, making Sri Selangor’s greens a walk in the park) was spot on; and you’re gonna need all the help you can get in this area.

Probably the best experience of caddies we’ve ever had. Plus, this caddy of mine has been with RSGC for 48 years. We spent a lot of time walking (no buggies here to desecrate the course) and talking and he told me long histories of the club, which I found very interesting: in fact, I wish he was my history teacher, I would have scored a lot better for my SPMs in form five.

Fairways (2/5)

Ah, where the rubber meets the road. We still need to tell it as it is, and as much as I would love to say RSGC has the most pristine fairways ever….it doesn’t. In fact, RSGC fairways seemed very very much mediocre for the price you are paying, resembling the much cheaper and much maligned Seri Selangor. I’m not a course expert and I wouldn’t know what sort of issues they are having, but it doesn’t look like this is actually what they desire to achieve. It might be work in progress, but the fairways were sparse in some areas, bald patches in others and even affected with what we laymen term as fairway acne, where cowgrass has started to grow in patches on the fairway. A quick look at their website describes the fairway as ‘Seashore Paspalum’ which could very well be Latin to me for my understanding. The rough remains as familiar cowgrass and the greens are Tiffeagle, similar to Beringin greens.

Back to the Papadom fairway, I asked Yoda why it was so, and what was RSGC trying to achieve, and he barked back at me, “Do or do not, there is no try!” while meditating in the Force. He did add that there was not enough sand on the fairway for the grass to grow in a more compact manner, and that the grass was only recently changed to this Papadom variety and they would need some time (and possible additional budget) to get it perfectly mat-like like those we find in Tropicana.

The plus point was that we were detained for 45 minutes on the 14th by rain after the rain, the fairways held up very well, with no sign of casual water. Still, bare patches gives this a disappointing minus on the course.

Greens (5/5)

As disappointing as the fairways were, the greens were a joy to behold. Not to say we did extremely well on the greens and we were playing, likely at the speed of 10, which I am thinking has gotta be pretty fast, since in my home club we are playing at 8. The greens in RSGC are in perfect condition. The roll is perfect, it is fast; and most featured table top greens, meaning a bad approach (which I had A LOT) does not have any bail out areas. These raised greens are hellish to stick to, and even then even more crazy to putt on. Eventually, psychologically you are so weakened that you are basically panic putting, i.e you don’t dare to putt with confidence and you end up just molesting the ball with the putter and groan when you miss that one footer knee knocker. The rain helped stymied the speed a little, but by then we were so utterly confused that I actually managed to putt worse after the greens slowed down!

But this is where Master Yoda kicked in. Over the course of my back nine, after my game stabled out after an outward 50 on an otherwise ‘easier’ Old course, his breaks and reads were essential and led directly to Par on 11th and Par on 13th and saved bogey on 14th and 15th. I one-putted 5 out of 9 holes, at one point one-putting four in a row. And this included an off the green putt on 12th that stopped literally 1 cm from the cup. Easily would have been a blown out game if not for him.

Rough (4/5)

The rough was cowgrass, and I found it quite fascinating that they are able to demark the cowgrass from their fairways so nicely. Cowgrass fairways were not unfamiliar for us, having hacked around KGNS and KRPM and for RSGC, there was a good balance between challenging and bail out roughs. The problem wasn’t so much of the grass, it was the number of trees in your way. And these trees are huge, mature ones, cropping out and blocking your shots and you need to play a variety of punches with your 5/6 irons or going over with your 8/9 irons. The bunkers were in good condition as well, after a heavy shower, not water clogged bunkers to be found.

Aesthetics (3/5)

RSGC will not the the prettiest course you laid your eyes on. It might carry a whole history of tradition, but at the end of the day, the flatness of the terrain makes very few elevated views of the course (at least on the ones we played on). We didn’t get to try the signature 17th hole on the Old Course, having played the first nine Old and second nine New, but the overall looks of the course wasn’t breath taking. A view of the Twin Tower and KL Tower could be seen on the first few holes of the 2nd Nine New Course, and the mature trees do cast some grand views of the course. The caddy mentioned some of these trees were donated by members; while others were as old as the course itself, carrying with it the entire history of the inception, the Japanese occupation and direlection and the restoration to modern day. I half expected him to touch the trees and connect himself to Ehwa and start chanting in Na’vi. Which he didn’t of course.

KL Skyline is definitely part of the course, and I am sure on a sunny day would have afforded some great camera shots. As it was, overcast skies didn’t inspire us too much, and as mentioned, there are many prettier courses out there, compared to this Malaysian Augusta.

Fun Factor (4/5)

Fun indeed. The greens were the primary driver of fun, because it’s truly great to see true roll for a change, after having played on nonsensical greens elsewhere. We’re not great putters by any stretch of imagination, but if you see your curling 10 footer go in not once, twice, but more times, you can be sure you’re enjoying it. As we were wagering a little, it was simply who putted better, and our groups were like boxers, trading blows by dropping good putts to square, to win. Never mind the double bogeys to win it. The course itself is an enjoyment. Now, even if the aesthetics isn’t much to shout at, the course set up is a different matter. I remembered looking around at the first tee (before knocking it OB to the driving range), and thinking, “This looks pretty flat. How difficult can this be?”

For some reason, it seems to play a little longer than it should. At about 6171m for the 1st Nine Old and 2nd Nine New, it seems to be average. Perhaps it’s the yardage that throws us out a bit, or the fact that we are so afraid of the greens we’re all hitting a club less; or the fact that a stray shot requires you to navigate through the mature, donated and the Ehwa trees, but with just two GIRs, it just means, it ain’t easy! Not because we suck, of course. How can that be?

But the fun was that OB stakes were rare and the course allowed all kinds of creative escapism. I was really funneling into a crap mode in my first five holes. OB hole 1. Three putt hole 2, Water in the pretty looking par 5; duffed chip in the nice par 3 4th and a topped drive to 50 m in the next hole. My caddy must have thought I was the dumbest golfer around, but I managed to right the boat a little and clear out my jitters eventually.

The 9th hole in the Old course was an awful one for a sliced drive and I deposited my third into the bunker and couldn’t get it up for bogey.

Making the turn to the new course, we teed up on a wide and inviting fairway on the 10th, under a humongous Ehwa tree. The second par 4 result was from my caddy’s wonderful and perfect read, missed my par on the 12th by 1cm, and parred the index 2 par 5 13th after wildly driving it so far left that I borrowed a fairway from the old course.

The closing 18th on the new course is worth mentioning because it’s a monster. A good drive still left me a 3 wood in and predicatably when all was at stake, I sliced it into water on the right and knocked my 4th into the fronting bunker, losing the wager. It’s a tough cookie to crack but it’s a very good ending hole, and I can just imagine the other drama that has unfolded here, especially ones involving larger winner purses than our RM4 per hole. There, we are playing in RSGC but we’re still cheapskates.

At the end of the day, RSGC definitely gave us the lion share of fun in our group.

Conclusion

It was indeed with some regret that we came to the end of our round with RSGC. Unlike other high expectation courses, RSGC didn’t disappoint overall. Fairways could use improvement, of course, but given the vicinity and accessibility in the heart of KL, and activity teeming around the club, and of course the rich history surrounding the club, it’s definitely a great experience to have a game here. Of course, it’s out of bounds usually to people like us hackers, unless you have a member friend.  It doesn’t blow you away with looks, but the good design, character of holes and amazingly manicured greens make up for mediocre aesthetics and mediocre fairways. And of course, with Yoda beside us: fear not we do, confidence we have, putting we will be good in, also, big our tipping will be.

The good: Geographically one of the most accessible course we know; though socially it is locked-down like Alcatraz to only members; great service especially from Master Yoda; greens are probably the best we’ve experienced; flat aesthetics belies a challenging course design surrounded with mature Ehwa trees; historical heritage that anyone with an opportunity should definitely play on.

The bad: Fairways are really not up to par for a course with such a reputation; aesthetics are not mind blowing; pricing could be mighty steep for the member guest and hidden costs like caddy tips could very well have you taking a policy loan out from your kids’ insurance and eating peanuts for the week.

The skinny: 30 of 40 divots (75%). RSGC’s long history has its pros and cons; many modern clubs might surpass it in terms of looks and gimmicky holes, but this is the original, the Augusta, the hallowed history of our nation’s love for golf imbued into its very fairways and greens. Where the Haig has treaded, and Bobby Locke himself has played on, what more is there to ask for the golfing afficiando? For the course to withstand the test of time and still have so much activity around it is a testament to the course design, club management and club members. It’s a must play for all Malaysian golfers simply for the historical influence on the game and we can finally now say, Gilagolf has hacked RSGC.

RSGC East Course Score Card

RSGC Information

Address: Jalan Kelab Golf, Off Jalan Tun Razak
55000 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia

Contact: +603-92063333

Fax: +603-92853939

Email: rsgc@rsgc.com.my

Website: http://www.rsgc.com.my

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Palm Resort GCC – Allamanda

Introduction

So far Johor, the golfing state of Malaysia has yielded one pretty good course in Legends, one mediocre one in Daiman 18 and one simply unrecommended in Royal Johor. So we were looking forward to add another good golf course into our Gilagolf bag of reviews, and we were pretty certain Johor would be able to cough up the majority of good courses for this country, it being so close to Singapore, the capital of robotic efficiency. The reasoning would be that Johor courses would cater to Singaporeans as well, so it does bear some weight that they would be slightly better than most courses if they want to capture a market as fussy as our brethrens in Kiasuland.

If you look at google maps, you’ll find one huge sprawling mass of golf course near Senai airport, called Palm Resort Golf and Country Club, and this was where we were headed for one night stay and golfing in the morning.

Travel (3/5)

The travel is very straight forward from Singapore at least. Take the Tuas exit and just go straight, follow the destination Senai all the way. The key is that you exit Singapore from Tuas, which is about 100x better than  going through the torturous Woodlands/JB Causeway (see the previous post on Daiman). The Palm Resort is right next to the airport, which technically doesn’t make it very peaceful, but in reality, with the amount of planes flying into Johor everyday—probably just 2—it didn’t make much of a difference. We did see the airport for the first time though and it was a state of the art facility.Too bad no one flies to Johor. Here’s the map from the website:

There is a slight confusion however at the entrance, stating that Palm Resort is straight on, while Palm Villa Golf Course requires you to turn right. It’s two different courses. It’s annoying in a sense, I don’t get why two courses would want to confuse the dickens out of golfers by naming themselves so close to each other. In utter confusion, we thought Palm Villa (Voucher from Top Premier Voucher Book, free green fee) and Palm Resort were one and the same course! Because in google maps, it looks like they are in the same vicinity.

This confusion carried over to the next day when we headed over to Palm Resort Golf Course with the resort buggy. One of our guys forgot to bring the voucher book so he had to rush back and ran back all the way, about 300 metres to the club house. Only to find that Palm Villa and Palm Resort were two different courses, and the discount did not apply to Palm Resort. What? Annoyed, we were already prepared to play so we just paid the special guest rate in Palm Resort and muttered our way to the buggy station.

So: Palm Villa NOT EQUALS to Palm Resort. Both are at the same vicinity but different course!

Price (3/5)

We ended up paying RM99 per person for all in package for golf, plus RM5 food voucher for each person. So it’s around RM94 for a weekday rate on a resort golf course, which is slightly high, but then again, a price we gladly pay to experience what was considered as a good course in this area. For walk in customers (non hotel guest), you might need to pay more. But (you didn’t hear it from us), there was no verification done on whether you were the hotel guest or not…so….hmmmmm.

The website was impressive enough, with an offering of 3 18 hole courses for the delight of golfers. And these are really 3 courses, not some fake advertising course like Legends, which had Nicklaus 18, Palmer 9 and an advertised Gary Player course which in reality is non-existent. At least Palm Resort is honest about it. These courses actually exist. Take that, Legends course, you liars.

The problem with courses like this is like the problem with buffet. You don’t know which one to select. The lady gave us two choices, since the championship Cempaka course was closed for maintenance, so it was a toss up between Allamanda and Melati course. Allamanda was recommended as an intermediate course, and also, more people seem to like it, as there were 14 flights already there. Melati had only 2 flights and was considered not as picturesque as Allamanda. But Melati had the Par 3 Hole No 2 with the largest bunker in Malaysia, as well as the longest hole in Malaysia at no. 15, measuring a ridiculous 684 yards from the tip. That puts Air Keroh’s last hole in the pocket.

But we decided on Allamanda as we wanted a relaxing round, and with a beginner on board, it seems like a better choice for now. We can always come back again to tackle the monster courses in Melati and Cempaka.

First thoughts

We teed off from the back nine to avoid some traffic at Allamanda, and we joined a local member to make it a four ball. She was a very nice lady, and complimented our beginner, who was also a lady, and we merrily made our acquaintance. She was also quite chatty and seem to appreciate having a younger group with her, especially us who seem to make fun of everything and laugh at every lousy shot we make. She turned out to be an invaluable resource as time went on, as she found our lost balls, gave us putting tips, gave us some good advice on nearly all the holes on yardage etc. This was key, as we sometimes would get lost converting yards to meters and completely stuff up our sense of distance.

Under the morning sun, we watch our first drives sail delightfully into a big, receptive fairway, that is almost a carbon copy of the first hole in Legends. Ah. Ginnifer courses. How we love ‘em.

Service (4/5)

The service was excellent; the lady behind the counter gave us very good description of all the courses, how many flights were there, and what was recommended. The marshal ensured that everyone moved along as quickly as possible and made sure to distribute the flights evenly on the back and front nines. In fact, we didn’t even get jammed up once, and we allowed a bunch of Koreans to go past us on our third hole. Buggy was in excellent condition as well. This is typical of the service found in resort courses: very good, very efficient, and very much catered to our fussy brethrens across the causeway. For us more relaxed Malaysians, this was a huge bonus compared to some of the service atrocities reminiscent to concentration camps we are so used to in the courses we play on.

Fairways ( 1/5)

And just like that, the entire perception of Palm Resort fell in a resounding thud. Once we teed up and went onto the fairway, I was in shock at the condition. Divots chunked up, not replaced, balding patches all over, skid marks from previous buggies, uneven groups of grass….it was shocking because it looked good from far, but now it’s far from good. It’s like seeing a girl from a distance sitting at a bar, dressed nicely, beautiful hair, nicely shaped face, great body…and when you get closer, you see, wait a minute, there’s some zits on her face and her arms and legs are too skinny…and when you get even closer, you see she has extremely thick eyebrows, lazy eyes, buck teeth and a beard. And just as you try to steer away and escape, she catches you and you see hairy arms, smell foul breath and hear a voice as deep as James Earl Jones. WHAT??

We immediately asked the local what the meaning of this was and she sagely says that the maintenance contract for the course was in transition. They have not renewed the previous contractor due to pricing issue, and instead have agreed with a Singaporean contractor to take over. The new contractor would take over in about 2 weeks from now, so until then the course was literally NOT MAINTAINED. Which explained the horrendous rough and the ugly fairways, as well as the less than pristine greens. I asked how much was the previous Malaysian contractor charging and she simply said, “Too Much for such a service.” For a malaysian golf course to choose a Singaporean golf contractor and choose to pay in SGD instead of RM is a testament of the atrocious business practices we unfortunately have in this country. How much markup do you think the previous contractor is charging, for this course to opt to pay Singapore instead?? Malaysia Boleh! Mesti Boleh Markup and make a killing one!

Greens (2/5)

The greens suffer the same fate as the fairway. There are some slight maintenance, you can see some parts are pressed down, but these are done as afterthoughts and probably not regularly. And it’s such a pity, because we saw that the greens were actually in fine condition before, and in some cases still are. The greens itself were quite easy to putt on, not much undulation, and had resemblance of better days in that the roll and consistency were still there, if not barely.

Rough (0/5)

Probably the worse feature of Palm Resort Allamanda. The rough is just inexcusable. You can tell it’s been thoroughly neglected as grass was allowed to grow to deplorable lengths and thickness, causing balls to disappear completely under. It was lamentable, so much so, it reminded us of the horrors of Bukit Beruntung, the mother of all crap course. This was very much the same experience. The second hole par 5 for instance, both myself and my partner lost our balls in the rough, not because of a bad shot, but just a skittered shot into the first cut. And they were gone. My second triple bogey on the 14th was the same story: not a bad shot in the rough and boom, was gone.

Bunkers were so-so, but the kicker was really the thickness of the rough, that made it almost impossible to find, and when we did find it, impossible to hack out.

Aesthetics (4/5)

Looks wise, this was most certainly a very pretty course. If you neglect to play on the rough, you can actually see great landscaping all around the course. In better days, this would have been a much better course than Legends for instance, but unfortunately fall short due to non-existent maintenance. The 11th hole par 5 is a challenging dogleg to the right to a receptive green. Par 4 13th is an extremely challenging hole with a bail out on the right, but any hook will end up in OB jungle.

The very pretty par 4 15th is reminiscent of the A Famosa Crocodile Hole, where a 3 wood positions yourself on the right fairway and allow you to hit into a green across the water. Hole 18 is a tough one, with the fairway sloping to the right, and balls to the right will be in heavy rough, as one of us found out and lost another ball, contributing to the overall frustration.

Hole 1 is a wide open Ginnifer hole but not so easy to get up, as it hits to an elevated tee. Hole 2 is a nice looking par 3 that drops down to a green fronted by a moat, surrounded with pretty landscaping. The last two holes, 8 and 9 are probably the exciting ending holes of the course: Hole 8 is an awesome 180 m par 3 to cross the water at about 170m. It takes guts to take on the green instead of bailing out on the right. A perfect hybrid sailed into the large green and I managed to two putt par there.

The final hole actually crosses back into the resort (and unknown to me, right next to our room), where a dogleg left cut allows you an access into a receptive green. Cut it a bit too much and you might end up OB. From 100 meters, I short sighted to the front of the green, but a chip to 6 feet and a good putt gave me my fourth par of the day, on an otherwise bad score of 96.

Fun Factor (3/5)

As long as we stayed out of the rough, we were ok with the course. In fact, the course plays pretty easy, if not for all the lost balls and lost strokes when our balls are in the rough. If given proper maintenance, it’s a close resemblance to resort courses like Palm Garden or Bangi.

The course generally have wide fairways, and gives a sense of largeness to the course…no narrow navigation with the 3 wood, just take out your driver and blast it all the way down. Having a local ‘caddy’-cum-player was also key to the fun we had, as she was able to locate some crucial lost balls and also helped us in professional advisory in navigating the course. Most of all, she helped our beginner relax and we all enjoyed her company immensely.

The fun generally improved as we moved to the first nine, and we were able to drive in the buggies onto the fairway after 10 am. We spent less time in the rough, and the two ending holes on the front 9 were certainly worth playing for.

Conclusion

Palm Resort course is a missed opportunity. Allamanda could have been so much better than when we played it, simply because of the lack of maintenance. We came during a transition period and I think it should be fair to the course if we had another go at it, when they have recovered the conditions of the greens, fairways and for the love of God, the horrendous rough. I believe that once they get the new contractor in, Palm Resort can probably be elevated to a must play course. As it is, and as Gilagolf unbiased review would have it, this is a supposed premier course that somehow manages to shoot itself in the foot and getting ranked as Not Too Shabby, the same with the likes of Kinrara, Nilai Springs and Monterez, definitely unflattering company for a course with this much of self claimed prestige.

It’s good from far, far from good; it’s that good looking woman at the bar that turns out to be a bearded man with thick eyebrows and voice as deep as Darth Vader.

The good: Pretty pretty course, the landscaping is picturesque; holes are generously Ginnifer-like, easy for the newcomer to the game; the course set up is friendly; service is excellent; good promotion prices for those staying in the resort itself; good course marshalling, throughout the game, we didn’t have to wait too long, even if 14 plus flights are in the course.

The bad: Greens and fairways are not well maintained; rough is Bukit Beruntung style, which means it sucks sucks sucks bad; for lack of maintenance, they should have dropped price a little to commensurate for the bad experience.

The skinny: 20 of 40 divots (50%). Palm Resort Allamanda is like that promising young golfer that grew up and didn’t amount to anything, and became a ball boy. Wait, that’s Ty Tryon. Well, we are rooting for Palm Resort’s new contractor to come in and do a makeover, so by no means this course should be given up on. Instead, maybe plan elsewhere for the next two months, wait for the course to recover and come back and play one of the three 18 hole courses. As a golf facility, I have no doubt Palm Resort will improve; now it will just be the growing pains. Recommended in the future; for now, maybe try Palm Villa, the confusing golf course name next door.

Palm Resort Allamanda Score Card

Palm Resort – Allamanda Information

Address: Jalan Persiaran Golf,
Off Jalan Jumbo, 81250
Senai Johor, Malaysia

Contact: +607-5992000

Fax: +607-5991370

Email: golfbooking@palmresort.com

Website: http://www.palmresort.com/golf-country-club-41.aspx

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Daiman 18

Introduction

Last year, we headed down to Johor/Singapore to explore some of the golf courses there. I believe there are more than 30 golf courses in Johor itself, possibly making it the Malaysian state with the most golf courses and least work done per capita compared to the rest. With so many courses to choose from, how can you ever get tired of playing golf? Likely, the explosion of golf courses here was contributed by the number of Singaporeans willing to take the drive across the border to play cheap golf. Singapore dollars now trade at almost 2.45RM, making a 100RM golf course rate slightly less than SGD40, which is really a steal. Unfortunately, for Malaysians, we see this contributing to the trend of increasing green fees from this golf courses, even if they generally suck.

After our harrowing experience with the RM100 caddy in Royal Johor, it was with some trepidation that we once again embarked on playing golf in Johor. This time, due to time constraints, we had to choose one that was relatively close to Singapore. There were two choices: golf Courses from the second link exit in Tuas, or golf courses nearer to the Woodlands-JB exit.

We chose the Woodlands-JB exit. The closest was the dratted Royal Johor Country Club, which we will now avoid it like the bubonic plague after our awful experience there. Moving further east, we have to choose Permas Jaya, Ponderosa, Daiman 18, Octville. Tanjung Puteri was a little too far so we’ll need to KIV that one. The norther courses like Austin Hill and Star Hill were also possible selection. At the end, we decided to head to Daiman 18 simply because we have the vouchers from the Top Premier Voucher book…and also because we previously thought Royal Johor was better than Daiman 18. I mean, really, the name of Daiman 18 evokes as much inspiration as watching bat shit dry in the sun.

Travel (2/5)

Daiman 18 is not very far from the JB/Woodlands causeway into Singapore. I am assuming that you would be taking the same way as we did, coming up from Singapore, unless you’re staying in JB itself. From Singapore, there is no way around it. Exiting from the JB/Woodlands checkpoint is as close as intravenous suicide as you can probably get, due to the absolute stupidity of Malaysian organization. Now, I love Malaysia, don’t get me wrong. But when it takes you a few minutes to exit Singapore and the next 45 minutes stuck in a jam, on a Sunday lunch time at the Malaysian side, you seriously need to question the lack of efficiency in Boleh Land. There are only 2 lanes for cars to queue in a snaky route to the checkpoints. Some heroic drivers took the third lane, meant for trucks I believe and ran smack into a group of traffic police and summons. Most of the perpetrators were Singaporean cars, so it’s definitely a welcome to Malaysia present for (from) them.

Anyways, if you manage to escape the checkpoint within this year, here’s the direction to Daiman, 15km away.

1. Head northwest on Singapore – Sultan Iskandar Ciq Jb     1.7 km

2. Keep right at the fork to continue toward Jalan Yahya Aldatar    200 m

3. Turn left onto Jalan Yahya Aldatar            750 m

4. Turn right to merge onto Lebuhraya Tebrau           5.9 km

5. Continue onto Jalan Pandan           3.0 km

6. Turn left toward Jalan Masai Baru 350 m

7. Sharp right toward Jalan Masai Baru          41 m

8. Take the 1st left onto Jalan Masai Baru      2.8 km

9. Turn left toward Jalan Pesona        70 m

10. Turn left onto Jalan Pesona           190 m

There is a small trickiness here, when you need to exit Jalan Pandan. There’s a small left turn before the flyover right at Carrefour (or was it Tesco??) which will allow you to go under the fly over and hit Jalan Masai Baru. We missed this turning and had to take the next left and go a big round behind the supermart. Beware.

Price (2/5)

We played on a Sunday afternoon, and was charged RM110 for our troubles. There’s a special promotion going on, which rendered our weekend top premier voucher at RM120 pretty useless. Now RM110 is about the same price we pay for Bangi on a Sunday afternoon package, which generally puts Daiman in comparison with our beloved Bangi, and which invariably Daiman falls short. I know we can’t expect cheaper prices , but still, from what we see in Daiman and what we compare with Bangi, these courses are world’s apart. Daiman 18 pricing just doesn’t cut it. And what is with the voucher then? Shouldn’t something we pay for allow us to have special pricing? This reminded us of the horrendous pricing strategy of another Johor Course: Legends, which actually cost more to use the discount vouchers than it would be NOT to use them. It makes no sense. Then give further discounts on the vouchers, darn it!

First thoughts

First thoughts that hit us as we teed up on the back nine: It looks a little bit like KRTU, a little bit like Perangsang. It’s probably a mixture of both; the slight elevation of Perangsang, the oil palm trees of KRTU. First hole was a dogleg left, and here’s where I found out that both my precious 60 degree and 48 Cleveland PW were missing! I must have left it somewhere at the other courses or at home.

Without these two clubs, I was literally incapacitated. Even with these two clubs I play like a monkey being dunked into a boiling vat of fire; what will I do without them?? So, proceeded to hash my chip with my normal PW, which just doesn’t work for me. Because of the weight, the shaft, the feel, the looks: like any good hacker, I grabbed on the first excuse I could find for playing badly: missing clubs. If only I had these clubs, I would surely have scored 75, at least!

Service (3/5)

Except for the awkwardness of explaining to us that the price of the discount vouchers are actually more than the normal price, the lady behind the counter was good enough to get us on the course quickly. She also was very efficient in providing me with a letter that stated that my clubs were missing, for a possible claim, if I don’t find them. The buggies were in good condition as well, so merrily we went on our way for our second stint in Johor golf.

Fairways (2/5)

The fairways, especially the back nine, were bald in many patches, and grass uncut. They looked good from far, but once on the fairway, it was tough to hit if there’s no grass, only soil where your golf ball is sitting on. We groaned if this was going to be the norm, but the fairways did improve slightly as our game progressed. Instead it’s likely due to the fact that buggies can drive onto these fairways.

Greens (2/5)

If anything is more annoying that bald fairways, it would be sandy greens. Number one, the greens were SLOW. As in, it’s hard to judge as well, since the greens are very inconsistent, sandy and slow, and varies quite a lot from hole to hole. These doesn’t make the greens tough, but just difficult to predict. The roll was also inconsistent, and in many occasions, I saw my 3 footer bumping and grinding it’s away from the hole. Hmm. That sounded a little weird.

Rough (2/5)

Daiman will have a lot of rank 2/5 in the categories. Simply because Daiman doesn’t suck as bad to deserve a 1; but at the same time, fail to raise its game to level 3 and beyond. So we see a lot of these so-so course conditions, rough conditions as well. The bunkers were useful enough. The primary rough however was a different tale. The ball sat down in almost all our shots in there, and at some point took us a long time to find the ball: which we all saw dropped and bounce!

Aesthetics (2/5)

I was ready to give Daiman a 1/5 for aesthetics, based on the experience on the back nine. However, once you made the turn, the course became something different altogether. Suddenly there was landscaping and beautification.  This was the front nine. It was as if the management spent all its landscaping budget on the first nine to entice the unsuspecting golfer into thinking this is like an Impian standard course, only to have a reduced budget of RM2.99 to do landscaping in the back nine.

The back nine did have a few reasonable looking holes. The elevated par 5 13th was nice; except that you had to hit it long and straight to navigate it. The par 3 17th was a knee knocking hole, with water all over and a tee off accuracy required. The last hole 18th wasn’t so nice; simply a straight shot pass the lone tree and entrance into a downhill hole.

Make the turn and you see the difference. The first tee box was a very narrow tee off, that opens up at the fairway. It’s like going through a narrow, constipated colon area before getting to the opening, and I’d even have to admit that that was a very strange simile indeed. But you get the picture.

The par 5 2nd is a long, tough monster and the next par 3 was similar to the 17th, in which you have crisscrossing of water at the front from an elevated tee position. It is also at this hole that I noticed that the club is starting to look much better. Some landscaping elements were in play, turning the characterless Daiman into something more palatable. The next par 4 4th also has a tree in the middle of the fairway, and this was followed by the fearsome index 1 par 5, in all its 472 metres glory. Elevated tee shot will stop short of the water. I hit my 3rd into the bunker on the right, but the trick about some of these Daiman bunkers was that the lip was very shallow. In this instance, I putted my ball out of the bunker, over the short lip, and onto the contoured green, watching it turn into the hole for a miracle Birdie.

Fun Factor (3/5)

Fun was again evident, not just because of a blitz of 3 very good holes where I went par-birdie-par, but also because the course sets up quite nicely for my fade/slice shot. I used mostly driver, and the times that I messed up such as the 8th par 4; was when I used my 3 wood and ridiculously pulled it into the jungle. From there, I was like Kevin Na and only got it out near the green on the 5th shot. Two putted for an awful triple. Also, having 3 par 3s on the front brought something more to the game: accurate tee shot. The par 3s are not easy, but at least they were picturesque and it was definitely a fun experience hitting shots in, especially with a wager on the table.

Judgement of distance is key as well. The third hole for instance, the pretty looking par 3 was set as 145 meters with a downhill shot. Because of all the landscaping surrounding this green, one guy from my flight saw it as being like a mile away, and opted not to trust the yardage, instead relied on his experience in the game, which so far has led him to many games over 100 strokes.  He took out a driver and literally blasted the ball 50+ meters over the green into the next fairway, much to the hilarity of all. The distance on the board is slightly off, or they must have moved the blue tees back, because I only used my six-iron and it was stuffed close. Unfortunately, my first shot had already zinged into the fronting water, so I was 3 on and 2 putted for a double. Nice looking hole though, but too few holes were as good looking as this, and Daiman suffers for it.

Also, we observed that traffic for a Sunday afternoon was quite limited. I.e not many people were playing the course, and the only 2 folks we saw were two Singaporeans taking shelter with us from a short bout of lightning. This could be because that many choose to play on other better nearby courses; and also the stupid crossing at the causeway causing the Singaporean golfers to seek out friendlier courses nearer to the second link exit. Of course, these are speculations, but all the better for us to blitz through the half empty course!

Fun was also somewhat limited due to the absence of my wedges. I was doing all I can to use my other clubs, and yes, it’s a poor excuse to use; but like any good hacker, we need to look to somewhere to blame for such lousy golf…because it’s definitely not our super skill level, right? What better excuse than missing clubs??

Conclusion

Daiman suffers the middle review syndrome, like Kulim. It doesn’t suck so much that we hate it, the way Frasers or TUDM does with so much ease; yet, it doesn’t impress enough and we just go along with the course, functional playing, without the critical draw factor, the things that make us go, “Jee, we gotta come back here to play again.” Instead, we were like, “Boy, I’m hungry. Let’s get the heck out of here as quickly as possible as get some chow!”. Should we recommend it? Well, for its vicinity to the causeway, I think it deserves some attention, but with so many courses around, including the Japanese run StarHill course, it needs to definitely do more to draw us back again to play the second time. Furthermore, with the horrific traffic in the causeway, we might from here on play on courses closer to the second link, such as Horizon Hills, Poresia or Pulai Springs.

The good: Daiman is a functional golf course with a few interesting holes; can be quite fun especially with 3 par 3s and a premium on iron shots; first nine aesthetics looks good; but balanced out unfortunately by the characterless back nine; close to town enables those in JB access the course quite easily; but the causeway jam is a common cause of people howling in frustration in their cars and cursing our beloved country’s excellence in efficiency (being extremely sarcastic of course).

The bad: Pricing strategy is reminiscent to the idiots at Legends, where discount voucher costs more than the actual price; travel through the causeway is excruciating; fairways, rough and greens are simply not good (or bad) enough to be memorable, causing golfers to forget how the course looks like or is set up.

The skinny: 18 of 40 divots (45%). Daiman 18 just doesn’t do enough to make us want to try it again. But considering the high price of surrounding courses, with the exception of Royal Johor, (which you should only play if every single golf course in Johor has been blasted to smithereens, and you don’t have anything else to do, such as taking up pottery classes) Daiman might be just affordable for a quick 18, to those who are in JB and the course was pretty empty even for a Sunday afternoon. But if you’re from Singapore, forget about the causeway and play on courses nearer to Tuas second link. It’s not worth going through the horrific crawl from Kiasu Land into Boleh Land.

Daiman 18 Score Card

Daiman 18 Information

Address: No.18, Jalan Pesona,
Taman Johor Jaya,
81100 Johor Bahru,
Johor Darul Ta’zim, malaysia

Contact: +607-3516813

Fax: +607-3533100

Email: daiman18@daiman.com.my

Website: http://www.daiman.com.my/golf.html

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Permaipura GCC

Introduction

I remember trying to get to Permaipura without the aid of GPS and ended up in Harvard. Not the university, but the golf course, and aside from the name does not bear any resemblance to any prestige that the hallowed name may invoke. Permaipura, on the other hand, is almost impossible to locate unless you keep your eyes peeled for the sign and you generally know where it is, or the vicinity of it. As one of the few golf courses that’s up north, and that’s under the top premier voucher book, it has been a club that I always wanted to play on, and on a particular weekday when the meetings are over, I managed to slip into the club for a very quick round of 18.

Travel (2/5)

It’s on the way to Harvard actually, so exit the north south highway at Sungai Petani North or (U) exit. After the toll, turn right and you’re at the Bandar Aman Jaya trunk road. Just go all the way till you see the sign to permaipura on your right. If you are like me, color blind and unable to see signs properly, GPS will be useful. If you’re like me, with no access to GPS, watch out for a series of orange road dividers in the middle of the road. These are to allow you to turn right into Permaipura.

Price (4/5)

Not bad, I paid RM66 for 18 holes on a weekday. This includes buggy and insurance, using the Top Premier Voucher booklet. It’s hard to find this kind of pricing, and immediately recurring nightmares of lousy courses like the TUDM Kuantan or Frasers Hill reccur involuntarily. I mean, you can call your course cheap or whatever, but I’d rather pay a little extra to make my golfing experience at least worth my time. As we’ll find out, Permaipura more than makes up for the price.

First thoughts

Like Harvard, Permaipura’s website is completely filled with marketing BS, the very same marketing BS that Gilagolf.net was started for, with the mission to banish such utter complete nonsense written by people who probably have never ever stepped into the golf course before.

“Sunrise.   Low lying clouds enveloping the foothills of Gunung Jerai.  Verdant rolling meadow of green as far as the eye can see.  Tranquil lakes setting off plays of light.  A sense of peace and quiet, broken only by the song of birds.  A spectacular setting to begin a day of challenges and excitement.  This is  Permaipura Golf & Country Club.  Kedah’s peaceful haven.”

What is this?? Broken only by the song of birds?? Verdant rolling meadow of green?? It gets worse:

“ Permaipura features wide and narrow fairways, water in play on most holes and contoured greens to baffle even the most seasoned players.  Come rain or shine.  All year round.”

This makes no sense whatsoever. Come rain or shine?? What does this even mean? If rain comes, siren sounds and you get your butt back into the club house before you get struck by one million volts of pure electricity. Contoured greens? Water in play on most holes?? They obviously have NOT played in this course before.

Obviously, whoever wrote this spent a lot of time taking out phrases from the English Country Landscape Magazines, because there is no such thing as rolling meadows of green as far as the eye can see. This brings to mind this picture:

Yes, this is the picture of your Microsoft Windows background. Permaipura looks like this:

I can definitely see the tranquil lake setting off plays of light. Can’t you?

I know this is a rant, but somehow, it’s absolutely so annoying that there would be in existence people who actually write this kind of crap. At least the crap we write in this blog has some basis of reality. And it doesn’t sound like it has been lifted straight out of a Jane Austen novel.

So, as for first thoughts, it wasn’t very good, thanks to some atrocious and useless information in their website.

Service (3/5)

Service that gets you to the course with minimum fuss is the best. The lady behind the counter was like a speed train. “You want to play golf? You got voucher? Ok, 66 plus insurance.” Count the money I pass her. “OK, go.” She passes me the tee off slip and directs me to a brand new buggy (which is a huge change compared to the cavemen vehicles in Cinta Sayang and Harvard). No fuss, quick service, excellent conditioned buggies. All equals good first impression of the course.

However, the course does get a little jammed up in the evening, as it allows walkers, but you just need to be patient. If you want to bypass them, most of them are quite courteous and would allow you to go through, I suppose.

Fairways (2/5)

The fairways were functional, but bore some grief in terms of bald patches, sandy areas, and uneven cutting of the grass. Also, the infamous buggy tracks thanks to allowing buggies onto the fairway. It wasn’t as bad as some of the hellish fairways encountered in this never ending journey to unveil the truth about golf courses behind all the fancy write ups on rolling meadows and come rain and shine drivel. The fairways definitely could be improved, starting with more grass needed in most areas. Sometimes, it’s as if every where my ball landed on the fairway (which, due to my crap driving, isn’t very often), the ball is found in a divot. Except it’s not a divot. Just bare patches sprinkled all over this rolling verdant meadow of greens that causes the birds to break out into song to interrupt the peace and the tranquility of the lakes setting off the plays of light. See how stupid it is to write in such a manner?

Greens (3/5)

The front nine greens were in a bad bad condition. Some of the greens were being sanded, but the difference is that these are under maintenance, and it isn’t the norm on other greens, so it’s unfair to judge the greens by the greens being maintained. The back nine greens were much better, and although playing a little slow, still showed that with proper care and maintenance, the greens would work out fine. There is a fair bit of variation in the greens, in terms of sizes, but contour wise and challenge wise, the greens remain a little short of it. So, whatever was written about the contoured greens baffling the most seasoned golfer is almost perfect BS. I am not a seasoned golfer and my game actually suck, but I still managed a respectable 31 putts and only 3 putted one hole.

Rough (2/5)

Compared to the well maintained Cinta Sayang, Permaipura’s rough falls short. Bunkers are not exactly well maintained, and especially the primary rough, strewn with leaves that has not been cleared since the day of Noah. It’s not too difficult to hit from the rough though, as it’s cut pretty generously. In fact half of the pars I made only came from the fairway, while the others were chunked out of the rough (or sand).

Aesthetics (2/5)

Permaipura isn’t what you’d term a very memorable or picturesque course. Landscaping is almost non existent, unless you consider golfers duffing their 8 irons and taking out tons of dirt in the process as landscaping. The course resembles a little bit of Kundang Lakes, or Kulim, where the designer, I suppose, focused more on just cutting fairways across jungles and plantation area and forgot about beautifying the whole place. Elevation wise, Permaipura is as flat as can be, without much vantage points to see the advertised meadows as far as the eye can see. I’m a little biased against the aesthetics, because from the description of the website you’d think this course is the heaven’s gift to earth, and God also would love to tee off here. Come on, seriously.

However, one thing about Permaipura: it sets up easy.

Fun Factor (4/5)

There’s a new name of this course: Par-maipura. Funky eh? Because you will be loaded with a lot a lot a lot of par opportunity, which comes to show that fun isn’t in struggling on long and challenging courses. Fun, for hackers, would be to play in courses that makes us feel better about our epileptic swings, and gives us the much needed encouragement to proceed hacking this game in the future.

Here you have it: Par-maipura is the MOTHER of all Ginnifer Courses.

If you think Bukit Kemuning has the largest fairways ever and the most generous areas of bailout ever, you ain’t seen Par-maipura yet. It doesn’t look that way from the onset. Hole 1 is a tricky little beast because a good tee shot might land you in the bunker and from there, you need to navigate through a drain fronting the green. Hole 2 opens up with a good shot on the left of the fairway while the 4th has a narrow tee shot that opens to a generous landing area.

Probably the world’s largest fairway can be found on the index 1 par 5 7th. All you need to do is navigate through a stupid tree right in front of your tee box area. Once you land on the green, you’d go wow. It’s humongous. You could land a rocket in here without any problem.

The back nine more or less plays the same. According to the website, it says it would play narrower but it doesn’t.There are loads of huge fairways staring back at you and plenty of scoring opportunities.

I think Permaipura sets up easy for the slicer. I.e if your missed shot is a slice, you can probably play this course with your eyes shut. For instance, in the back nine,4 out of 7 fairways plays to a dogleg right, meaning you can aim left and fade/slice back your ball in and not worry too much on getting it out of bounds. Only once on the easiest hole 14 that I messed up my drive en route to a triple bogey.

Otherwise, 4 pars on the front and 4 pars on the back nine really gave me additional reason to continue this wretched game of golf. I could have added one more on the easy par 5 last hole. After a great drive, I completely topped my hybrid and left myself 160 meters to the green. A big pull with my six iron and I was gone. Into the pool next to the green. From there, 5 on, two putted for a demoralizing double.

Still, any course that allows me to hit 85 is definitely worth playing again. I was putting almost unconsciously in the front nine, with five one putts. Most of it were in the 5 to 10 feet zone, so it was really something to see those saves for bogey on 6th and 8th go in. I missed a bundle on the second nine though, so like the balance of life, everything evens out at the end.

Conclusion

Par-maipura is a generous course, and is definitely worth playing, especially if you just had a long day at work and need to blow some steam. The big fairways are a sight for sore eyes, and although aesthetically it resembles Kundang Lakes (which is not a compliment, it’s like saying your face resembles an exhaust pipe), it makes up for it by providing a fun experience for the not so great golfer.

The good: At RM66 for 18 holes, it’s a good bargain course to play, definitely better than Harvard; good service and finally, good buggies; generous fairways to the slicer; probably a good place for the beginner to start hacking; the greens are actually quite reasonable, especially once they finish with the maintenance program.

The bad: Fairways are worn down; the rough is unkempt and bunkers are hard; aesthetically doesn’t do too much and makes you wonder the writers on their website are likely pot smoking chimps; make sure you don’t miss the small sign on the right or you’ll be heading to Harvard instead; the course traffic is quite high due to 9 hole walkers in the evening.

The skinny: 22 of 40 divots (55%). Par-maipura crawls into the middle tiered golf course, under the Not Too Shabby category. The winning factor of this course is the friendliness and the absolute Ginnifer kind of set up. It doesn’t intimidate or takes away your man hood: if you play reasonable golf, you can score here. Except for the fairway condition, and the lack of landscaping around the course, if you had to chose a club in this area that is not called Cinta Sayang, Permaipura is a good choice.

Permaipura Golf Card

Permaipura GCC Information

Address: Jln Permaipura 5, Riverside, 08100
Bedong, Kedah
+604-4594000

Contact: +604-4594000

Fax: +604-4594500

Email: permai@po.jaring.my

Website: http://www.gentingplantations.com/golf/

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Cinta Sayang GCR

Introduction

Northern Malaysia is the home of a few possible gem of golf courses, and we’ve revealed courses like Bukit Jawi, despite having such atrocious service harking back to the service levels in the days of early neantherdals, as a picturesque and pleasant golf course to play in. Or Kulim Golf, with its neither here nor there kind of experience, but yet managing to evoke a positive review from our difficult to please, and not so talented Gila Golfers.

So this round, I’ve managed to include one of the top golf courses in this northern region into the family of Gila Golfed courses – Cinta Sayang Golf and Country Resort. Cinta Sayang in Malay means, Love and Affection, and although this sounds a little on the feminine side, the course by no means is a pushover. Whether it invoked Love and Affection from the affected golfer remains to be seen in this review.

Travel (3/5)

Unlike Permaipura, getting to Cinta Sayang is a snap, due to extremely large signs leading you, with an extremely generous font size to tell you exactly where to turn and how to get your itchy golfing butt to the course.

Map

Simply, take the Sungai Petani North exit, and after the traffic light after the toll, turn left. Once you’re on that road, the signs will lead you through. Follow them like the wise men following the star to Jesus. Eventually, you’ll be led to a road where Cinta Sayang is and watch out for a right turning into Cinta Sayang Resort, and bam you’re there. It’s easy.

Price (4/5)

Initially, I called up Cinta Sayang and they said for a single golfer, having to pay for an entire buggy alone would be RM140, which to me, is simply quite expensive for a weekday golf in a region that’s so remotely up north, in a town that resembled New Zealand’s human population, which is slightly more than the number of tapirs found in the wild. I think. I might have slept through that National Geographic program on tapirs in the wild, but you get the idea.

But I called again and this time, bless her generous soul, a chirpy sounding girl on the other end said, “We have promotion today! Only RM122 for everything in!” RM122 is inclusive of the RM50 for the buggy, which generally, if you have 2 players sharing the buggy, you’d pay half of that, making the actual price about RM97, which is the price you get for Kinrara or some of the mediocre courses back in KL. In fact, even Monterez charges more expensive than that, probably with the entirely mistaken view that the course is actually worth that much. It’s not. It’s still a Mickey mouse course that will eventually cause the death of a golfer by having so many fairways adjacent to each other.

Anyway, Cinta Sayang’s pricing wasn’t extremely cheap, but still for a golf with this much reputation, it was a good price to pay.

First thoughts

Taking in the first look of the course on hole 1, you see an extremely inviting fairway just looking back up at you, with fairly matured trees lining both side of the fairway and not a single drop of dreaded water. This is a Ginnifer Starting hole. For those at loss for this sort of description, please refer to our Staffield writeup. It’s one of those holes that doesn’t cause you to buckle at your knees because you know even with the ball in the trees, it’s still sparse enough for you to navigate a little to save the hole. So with confidence, you stride up to the tee and let fly a confident 210m drive straight down the reasonably manicured fairway.

So far, it’s Love and Affection still.

Service (2/5)

I think generally the service is fair. It took some time to get to the course because there wasn’t anybody at the counter for a while, but that could be a toilet break or something. Otherwise, the marshals etc were polite and understood the general urgency to get grumpy golfers on their way to the first tee. Two gripes that really took a bite out of the service quality: The conditions of the buggy were terrible and the course management is questionable. The former: Like the excruciating experience in Harvard, I was dumped into a buggy that was as responsive as a rotting corpse of an iguana being rolled over continuously by speeding tankers. As in, it’s those old school, petrol smelling buggies that persist in not starting until you press on the accelerator for 3-5 seconds and not stopping after you jam the breaks for 3-5 metres. I exaggerate on the second point, but the point is, the buggies are old. Not as terrible as Harvard’s ridiculous buggies, but it’s like comparing a 300 kg and 270 kg guy and talking about which one is healthier. I.e they are both probably not going to live past their next birthday if they don’t improve.

The latter: Cinta Sayang has a very unique tee off area. Usually, the 1st and 10th tee can be adjacent, much like Staffield. Cinta Sayang has the 1st tee, 10th tee and sandwich in between them is the 14th tee off. Now, this is unique in some ways, but annoying in other ways. I was blazing through the course on this particular instance. As in BLAZING. I finished my 11th hole in 1 hour 45 minutes. I was on a record speed of finishing 18 holes in 2 and a half hours. The course was empty, nobody in front of me at all.

But bam, once I hit the 14th tee in just over 2 hours, as if beamed into existence by Scotty from Star Trek, I saw a full flight in front of me. With two caddies. As in out of nowhere. I caught up with them and had to wait on the 15th and on the par 3 16th as they were teeing off and I observed to the caddy politely that I didn’t think there was any flight in front of me, and the starter has already mentioned that I was the first guy teeing off that afternoon.

You know when people are guilty of wrong doing? They avoid eye contact with you entirely. The caddy muttered some nonsense about too many afternoon flights, and after the last guy of the flight shanked his ball into the water, all of these 4 fellas started talking loudly, ignored my penetrating stare into their souls, and ambled away past me as if I did not exist. And for the last 3 holes, it took me as long to complete them as I did for the first 9 holes. As in, it was almost as if they were purposely playing slow just to skewer me.

I don’t really blame the flight, but more of the course management. They allowed a flight to tee off on the 14th hole simply for convenience. I don’t know if this is a club rule or not, maybe some Love and Affection fellas can correct me, but it’s annoying. And you can’t simply just cut into a flight like that and ignore my pleas to allow me to pass like I am some kind of Martian without any clothes on. I know 4 ball is priority, but come on, I was blitzing through the course, let me pass instead of juggling golf balls waiting for you to finish shanking.

Fairways (3/5)

I never thought fairways would be super for any courses that allowed the dreaded buggies to go onto them, and Cinta Sayang suffers from that fate. The fairway over all was well maintained and manicured, but no way resembled the perfect mats found in Tropicana, the former IOI Palm Garden or many of the top notch golf courses. I am not asking them to disallow buggies on the course, because that would mean we need to finally use our legs to move, which is very annoying as well: but simply, courses with buggies on the course is not going to be very nice. But aside from that, and from occasionally tracks on the fairways, it was well kept and well maintained, a healthy firmness and sponginess and lacking the bare “botak” spots in some other courses’ fairways.

Greens (3/5)

A premier course is always identified with exampalary greens: Saujana did a remarkable job back in Impiana, in of course, Saujana and in Beringin. Sorry, Berigin is not a premier course by any stretch of imagination, just the greens are nice. Cinta Sayang greens are OK, not amazing, but expectedly well maintained for a premium golf course. Variation wise there’s not much to be found, compared to the undulation of KRTU, the massiveness of Templer or the invisible breaks of Saujana. Character wise, the greens are simply functional, pretty straight forward putting. On the other hand, the consistency is very welcoming. The greens played fast, and was more or less similar in all the holes. It was great, but at the same time, started to give me the yips, once you know if you miss, your return putt might be longer than what is generally most comfortable (which for me is a 2 inch return putt).

Rough (4/5)

The rough was tough. The primary rough had heavy grass that latches on your club face to turn it and rough that allows your golf ball to settle in: all contributes to the fact that hitting the fairway is important to have Love and Affection on this course. But the good thing was the first cut of rough was more forgivable and many, many holes I played, I played from this first cut. The 4 fairway hits is not really indicative, because I played mostly from the first cut in most of the holes. Sand was in perfect condition so much so that I could actually use my sand wedge instead of my 60 degree or pitching wedge unlike most courses when the sand was hard and the sand wedge bounce would cause me to skull the ball into oblivion. Also, even with so many matured trees, you will hardly see the rough littered by annoying leaves that hides your balls. Through out the game, I could see the maintenance crews working hard to clean the course in these small but important areas. Unlike the idle gallery in Kinrara, these guys actually do their job. Good work, Love and Affection course.

Aesthetics (4/5)

Cinta Sayang is a mix of Impiana and Staffield. Staffield for playability, Impiana for looks. The first hole was a ho hum looking hole, but once passed that, Cinta Sayang unveils herself and you go, Wow. Second hole is a pretty par 5 crossing water, and coming to the first of many white bridges. It’s a nice touch. Instead of rotting wood colour, they painted all their wood bridges white. Like in Rivendell. Which does not really exist except in Middle Earth. For those wondering what the heck am I babbling about, never mind. Hole 5 had a paddock for horses to the left of the par 3. It’s empty now, I believe the last horse was finally killed by a random hook shot from a guilty golfer, but it’s there for historical aspect and quite pretty if there were only some white horses complimenting the white paddock.

Cinta Sayang opens up herself slowly. She doesn’t expose everything at first glance, the way some courses do, but as you play each hole, you glimpse some picturesque view of the course. And it’s not easy as well, because Cinta Sayang doesn’t have too much elevation, which usually contributes to the wow factor. It plays fairly flat, but it makes good use of the meandering lakes and rivulets and the criss crossing of white bridges all over the course. I always wanted to use the words meandering and rivulets in my reviews. It makes me sound like a novelist. Or a male Enid Blyton.

Fun Factor (3/5)

The fun could have easily been higher if not the the bad wait and traffic jam on the 14th onwards. It would be acceptable if it’s in the normal course of play. But these guys cut in! Is it legal in Cinta Sayang to just start your game on the 14th??  Is it legal to ignore the poor chinaman who wants to play quickly? Is it legal to smoke pot and drink petroleum?

Anyhoos, this time brain farts were minimum but still present. After a great first drive, my approach with a PW was woeful to start off a bogey. A hook into the woods, a second still in the woods and a third out, and a bad hybrid shot on the second hole par 5 set me up for a double. The 3rd was really a very good drive, so good in fact that I plopped it into the water on the left. From there, I played bogey golf until ending with 3 straight pars, thanks to two greens in regulation on the 7th and 8th hole. The 13th hole is really tough, its an uphill par 3 that requires almost two clubs more and hitting it accurately is the key, because the up and down is tricky due to a huge knoll on the green.

Beware the par 5 14th. I drove well but due to a blind drop on the fairway I had no idea how far it was to the water fronting the green. A good hit with a six iron was too good. Water. 4 on, two putt for 6. 15th and 16th are reasonably easy holes, but I missed a two footer on the 15th and a 3 footer on the 16th and was ready to throw my Rossa into the drink. At times, the hole looks smaller than a Fijian tadpole, which is 50x smaller than your normal tadpole, according to an unrecorded and unsponsored study of Fijian wildlife…anyway,the ball just refuses to go in!!! Ending hole 18th is a tricky dogleg right where if you push it too far right, you’re blocked. I still got up and down through some luck from there for Bogey. I know, up and down means par for most of you. I suck, so up and down for bogey and I’m ready to do a pole dance. Which I won’t, for the sake of humanity’s innocence.

Conclusion

Cinta Sayang didn’t disappoint. It sets itself up as the premier course in this region, and although Gilagolf still hasn’t hacked many courses up north, it can be safely assured that Cinta Sayang would be a great course to find yourself in. The pricing, taking into account splitting the buggy, is really competitive with the KL prices and you get better quality here. Really, with all the good courses in KL looking to cash in foreigners and marking up their price, it’s good if Cinta Sayang remains sub 100 for a walk in golfer.

The good: Get the promotion prices and you’re safely sub 100 if there is another person to split the buggy; very pretty course, generous fairways, and good design of the course requiring a variety of shots from the tee in terms of placing, accuracy or just plain bombing the big fairways;rough is well maintained and greens are consistent in speed.

The bad: The idea of allowing a flight to cut in on the 14th is simply not good practice any way you look at it; the buggies are on life support at the moment; greens aren’t extremely challenging; course lacks elevation; fairways struggles in patches to deal with skid marks of golfers driving like F1 racers.

The skinny: 26 of 40 divots (65%). It’s easy to recommend Cinta Sayang, especially if the price maintains. It’s a Ginnifer looking course that’s inviting, that’s pretty and welcoming to the golfer that hooks, claws, slice and splices his way through his game. Love and Affection time, baby.

Cinta Sayang Golf Card

Cinta Sayang GCR information

Address: Persiaran Cinta Sayang, 08000 Sungai Petani,
Kedah Darul Aman.

Contact: +604-441 4666 (12 lines)

Fax: +604-441 5600

Email: cintasayang@cintasayangresort.com

Website: http://www.cintasayangresort.com/cs_golf.html

Cinta Sayang Golf Card

Cinta Sayang GCR information

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CityGolf @ BSC

Introduction

Golf has always these 2 disadvantages: we’re at the mercy of the weather and we’re stuck with crappy golf courses. So imagine you have discovered the art of teleportation, and you have managed to break your body into sub-atoms, transported through light across the world to another place and have your atomic structure reconstructed. Imagine you also have mastered the art of controlling weather and you can now optimize the weather to be slightly around 20 degrees, with also inverter clean air technology.

Basically, you are Storm and Nightcrawler rolled into one. Time to save the world?

No, like all avid golfers, you would obviously transport yourself to all the top courses on earth and start hacking those courses!

So this is the premise of CityGolf, an indoor golf club, sporting 4 areas (I think) with a giant screen simulating any golf course on the menu, for you to hit an actual ball against the screen and watch it fly. It’s like TigerWoods the computer game, but where you are actually hitting the ball.

The concept is not new…when I was about 25 and when I first picked up the game, I did ask around to see if there was a sound business case for it. I guess there wasn’t at that time, and I could only fork out RM30k for that venture, to which the vendor in UK gave me a virtual finger.

Travel (4/5)

CityGolf is located at the Bangsar Shopping Centre. No, not Bangsar Village. The famed BSC that has been around for eons and that had recently upgraded. It’s impossible to miss. Go to the new wing and go all the way up to the 4th floor. Boom, you’re there, easy peasy! Parking might be costly though, and for all the kiasu golfers who are so accustomed to free car parks, it might not be a kick in the face.

Price (3/5)

Ok, Pricing. The easiest is to get it off their website over here:

It might seem steep a little, but there you go, nobody expect this to be cheap, what with all the technology involved. And hey, you don’t need to exercise by doing all those annoying walking with your feet…that’s gotta count for something, right?

But digging further, apparently they now have a promotion on weekdays and as well as Sunday nights 6pm onwards. It’s buy one hour and get one hour free. So basically, you pay RM100 for 4 people and you get to play 2 hours. That  makes it RM25 per person for 2 hours. Which is pretty ok, I think, and for the novelty why not?

First thoughts

Well, don’t expect it to be like real golf, it’s a simulation after all. There were four of us, but basically 3, since after a couple of swings, my wife decided that the magazines (and there were A LOT of cosmo and girl mags) were a lot more interesting than swinging a club at a screen.

We tried out the “driving range” first, and it was fun. We were hitting pretty accurate, and my 8 iron was dropping around 140 metres, which was typically correct. It might be a little intimidating at first, especially when you thwack the driver and it slams into the screen, but you will get used to it.

The plus thing is that you get a whole lot of statistics, and to a stats junkie like me, it’s a nice touch. Will this help us improve? Personally, I don’t think so. It’s not like I can control my launch angle and all that jazz, but it might be good for someone who can read these (like a teacher), and then tell us what to fix. I think it’s great. I’m so sick and tired of clownish golf teachers (and boy we have a lot), who would just say, “You look up lah.” “You swing too fast lah” “Just relax lah”. I mean, what the heck?

Service (4/5)

While not your traditional golf club, CityGolf doubles up as a lifestyle club as well, with a bar, and dining area and also a gigantic screen where I saw a bunch of people watching aussie football. Which is how Australians call a variant of rugby. I think. Anyways, service has got to be good, and it was. They got us into our ‘booth’ pretty quickly, tapped a little on the system and we were off. Like all Malaysians, when they came and told us time was up at 7:50 pm, I told them we started at 6:00 pm (which was the truth) and asked for 10 more minutes, and was obliged, so we played another par 3 for fun. Friendly folks.

Accuracy (2/5)

Now, the review’s gonna be a little different, since we’re not exactly dealing with a golf course in a traditional sense. It’s a sim. So, we’ll be looking into Accuracy as the first  criteria, i.e how accurate does it depict our shots. I think it does a fairly good job on the good shots. But there were times when we completely hashed the shot (and there will be plenty I can tell you) and still saw the ball go 200 meters. Once I sliced it so bad, in real life it would have boomeranged back to me, but in the sim, it flew to the right, and landed 215 meters. We thought it must have been because there was no wind, and again we tried, and again I sliced, and it was about the same.

I’ve played golf long enough to know my crap shots have no chance of even getting past 180 meters. So, strange as it may sound, maybe our shots are SO LOUSY that the sim does not know what the heck to do with it, and automatically corrects it, the AI thinking to itself: “No way this shot is like this. Unless it’s an orang-utan swinging the club, which in my algorithm is a 10000000 to 1 chance happening.”

Trust me, Mr Computer, we ARE the Orang Utans in your algorithm.

Realism(2/5)

Realism is not so much on how the game interprets our shots, but how we interpret the game. While the first hour was quite fun, especially when you get to wallop around the hallowed grounds in St Andrews, the thought is basically, “Gee, it’s just not the same thing.” There is obviously no way they can simulate everything, so I guess this is more of a technological limit.

The fairway, rough and sand are just different textures of mat we hit from. The rough doesn’t really do much to the game, in fact, we prefer to whack from the rough since it sits up so nicely. The sand? It’s just the rough in white. Wouldn’t it be cool if they actually put a small bunker in the booth? Of course, the clean up crew is going to curse the day they said yes to the job.

But how great it would be if they had wind pipes around the booth and when we set it to windy or whatever, we’d literally feel the wind around us. Or water, if we set to stormy. As of now, wind, breeze etc only affects what’s on the screen.

And adding some speakers around the booth, where we’d have ambient sound would also create another experience. And the ultimate, dynamic flooring, depending on where we are on the course, the floor auto adjusts itself to simulate the lie. Wow! What are we smoking??!

The worse experience is on the green, and again there is no way to properly simulate the putting experience. Here, they try to tell you to putt to the green and follow the line, but there’s no way we can do that without making a hash out of it, either too slow, too fast etc. So we all end up 4-5 putting. There was once, one of us, a beginner, putted like 7 times or something and ended up with an 11. It wasn’t very fun at all, waiting for her to finish up. It came to a point where we decided: look, forget about the green, everytime we hit the green, we just pick up the ball and play the next hole. Of course, we were all given massive scores at the end, but who cares? This ain’t real!

User Interface(3/5)

The UI was pretty clear cut. Just tap around the screen to navigate and select different properties of the game. It will come pretty intuitively for guys with ipad, until you start trying to flip with your fingers or pinching to zoom in and realize you look like a complete nincompoop.

It wasn’t as easy to readjust and realign though and after spending a few seconds trying to figure it out and too lazy to holler for help, we said, just aim to the other side of the screen to compensate.

But overall, it was a fairly easy to use system. You can even email your scorecard back to yourself, but due to our maximum scores on each hole (having picked up the ball), we said, nah, no need lah.

Aesthetics (3/5)

Graphic wise, it bears a striking resemblance to TigerWoods EA sports golf. It’s not too bad, but on close ups, it does look like some details have been minimized to optimize the performance, I suppose. I don’t think anything much can be done about it. The whole area itself though is nice. It’s in good condition and they provide us with really great clubs, the S9-1 driver and cobra irons, vokey wedges and scotty Cameron putters. They even have ladies set out for you. It’s good to play with decent clubs, but for some inexplicable reason, our game continues to suck. WHY?!?

Golf courses wise, it’s a beautiful menu. No Augusta unfortunately, but Pebble Beach is there. Kapalua, St Andrews old course, Bayhill, Belfry, Torrey Pines, Oakmount…these are golf royalty here, and hey, we’re probably never gonna play there, so might as well just enjoy the sim. No Bethesda though, so no simulation of US Open 2011!

Fun Factor (3/5)

It’s definitely a novelty at first. To be playing golf in perfect weather, with perfect lie, with cosmopolitan magazine to read, with sandwiches to order, and taking a leak in an actual toilet, as opposed to behind a big tree in the wilderness. It’s a great place to take beginners, especially for golf lessons. I had a chat with the resident pro there and it seems it’s very popular to learn from there. It’s definitely better than your typical driving range pro’s standards, especially with the immediate feedback system on screen. It’s a nice place to take kids as well, or your wife who wants to learn (just keep away all the girl mags!!), because you don’t have the obnoxious chinaman uncle in the flight behind yours, puffing a cigarette and cursing “Why SO SLOW WAN??!? %%$#^&!” It certainly adds a little pressure with a chinaman cursing you.

It might also be a nice place to take out your girlfriend on a date, strange it may sound. But it’s very popular overseas to play mini-golf at night, which didn’t really catch on here, probably due to the weather. Maybe sim-golf will change that. Or not.

But the realism does take the fun out a notch or two. I don’t know, it just feels weird to hit a shot and instead of walking or driving or just generally looking for a tree to take a piss; you go back to the sofa and sit down and play with your iphone or read a mag. It takes you out of the game. Instead of wondering how to hit your next shot, you just wait till it’s your turn and you then decide. It’s a lot like bowling. Especially when you have like 8 people in one lane. You bowl twice, you celebrate (or curse) depending on your score, and you sit down and go into screensaver mode while waiting again.

Especially when someone in your flight plays not so well, on the greens, putting here and there, it just comes to a point where, “Jeez, forget it, let’s just play the long shots and forget about putting.”

Conclusion

Whew, that’s a lot to talk about for just a simulation of golf. Points are added because it’s still fairly a novelty here in Malaysia….and it will definitely help in bringing more people to this crazy game of golf. It’s definitely a good alternative to hang out and chill on a Sunday evening, along with having a few laughs at our considerably retarded swings.

An added touch is that Citygolf holds regular tournaments for the public which can be tracked at their website, so I think that’s a pretty cool feature, especially if you plan to play there regularly.

The good: The price is reasonable, especially promotion wise; travelling is easy, while the wives go shopping, at least the blokes can now do something else other than sitting down on a bench looking like a twit; easy-going, no intimidation for beginners; chance to play St Andrews and Pebble Beach for the upcoming hackers; good venue for corporate functions and tournaments might be interesting.

The bad: The green simulation will test your patience until you decide to tomahawk your Scotty Cameron putter on the ground, especially if you’re just starting or you have a beginner on board…until you realise it ain’t your scotty cameron! Instead, maximise your time and skip the greens; realism is still a little short especially when I can escape out of the deep woods in one shot; accuracy is suspect when my famous banana slice goes 215 meters and I can hit the green in regulation.

The skinny: 24 of 40 divots (60%). It gets an above average because of the novelty of indoor golfing, a reasonable simulation of the great courses (no Augusta!), excellent service and providing us an escape from following our wives shopping. It doesn’t replace the real experience though, unless they can simulate the smoking, cursing chinaman uncle in the back flight.

CityGolf @ BSC Information

Address:

Bangsar Shopping Centre
285 Jalan Maarof, Bukit Bandaraya, 59000 Bangsar, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Contact: +603 2282 0011

Fax: NA

Website: http://www.citygolf.com.my/

Email: info@citygolf.com.my

info@citygolf.com.my
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TUDM Kuantan Recreation Club

Introduction

NOTE: This post has so far received possibly the most number of comments, mostly in a language that resembles malay, but one that I cannot interpret even with the help of google translate. Yes, I nearly failed my Malay. That’s why this blog is in English, I suck at comprehending Malay in any form except to order food.

Anyways, one of the comments received was thankfully in comprehensible English, and in respect to Gilagolf readers (and it’s amazing there are actual readers who appreciate these nonsensical reviews, and some even take it extremely seriously!), I will try to address it, hopefully to appease any wrath incurred due to our frank (and oftentimes insulting) reviews.

Blitzer commented and gave us a very good historical background on TUDM and why their fairways, buggies, greens and rough suck as the do. However it still doesn’t change the fact that this course is in a dire need of repair and improvement. Some interesting points:

“Golfshop – how to compete with Panwest, Transview, RGT etc? It is an old school golf shop and we like the service rendered. Anyway, I think you owed an apology to the uncle. You know the number, give him a call, son.”

I actually happened to like the uncle. He was a dream collector. If you mean by calling him a weed smoking guy, it’s simpy an irreverant expression often used in this blog: calling ourselves monkeys, chimps, electrocuted tapirs and bat shit eating golfers etc doesn’t actually mean we love eating bat shit, it’s simply to say we suck.  But if I offended the helpful uncle, then I’m definitely sorry for that, he’s an excellent fellow to chat with. But the proshop still smells like thinner and propanol.

“Bro, didn’t your mother teach you to ask permission before taking pictures? In the airbase – taking pictures is a punishable offence by law. You should thank god if someone is not knocking on your door at odd hours! (or erase from this blog the pic with C130 is flying, and with ATC tower and…..you know what to do).”

Boy, I get that a lot. So does my mom. The fact is that she wasn’t brought up in the army, so there’s no way momma’s gonna know all these stuff. She’s a really simple lady. All she wants is a nice house and grandkids. She did teach me to eat my vege, which I appreciate. I do thank God nobody is knocking on my doors at odd hours! It is annoying when that happens and it did happen before!

In respect to Gilagolf readers (and you are one of the few of them, it seems), I’d rather lose pictures than lose precious readers, so the offending pictures (or any pictures depicting towers and planes or structures) have been replaced, by my favourite towers of Mordor and Ortanc and the infamous fellbeast of the Winged Nazgul, the Witch King of Angmar. Sauron, RISE!!

Anyways, appreciate your comment as always, and keep hacking and reading!

End of NOTE

Thanks to maintaining this blog, I’ve been—at times—getting myself to play on courses that I otherwise would not even think of playing, but for the sake of putting courses in Malaysia – Good, bad and downright medusa ugly – on the map, over the years, this blog has gathered and reviewed more than 50 courses in and out of Malaysia.

And so, for reasons you wouldn’t be too interested in, I found myself in the middle of nowhere at this place called Bukit Gambang, which styles itself as a Resort City, when it is actually just a few blocks of apartments cobbled around a small water park about ¼ the size of Sunway Lagoon, which itself is generally about 1/100 the size of Disneyland. Malaysians generally love to make their fun things sound bigger than it actually is. Hm.

So anyways, I brought a half set with me just in case I happen to chance upon a golf course (which we did, passing Maran Hills on the way). Searching for the nearest golf course via google maps, I came across TUDM Kuantan Recreation Club, about 15 minutes drive from Gambang. Now, TUDM stands for the Malaysian Royal Air Force, which is more well known for losing jet engines to Uruguay than to have reasonably nice golf courses. But I had only 2 hours to kill, so I didn’t have too much of a choice, between mindless playing Sudoku or tee-ing it up, I half-heartedly chose the latter, with the Gilagolf.net blog in mind.

Travel ( 2/5)

Before the highway that linked West Coast Malaysia to East Coast Malaysia, we had to navigate through what we call ‘Trunk Roads’, i.e small, windy passageways with just one lane on either side, with cars zooming by the opposite direction centimeters away from you. Trunk roads are extremely hostile to the unskilled driver, and many Malaysian drivers have grown up tackling these infamous trunk roads by jamming the accelerator to zip by the 16 wheeler tanker, eating into the opposite traffic lane, and zipping back into their own lane, just as another 16 wheeler careens by the opposite direction, barely missing each other. This life and death situation repeats itself in an cycle for 200 over kilometers.

But now, with the new highway, it’s a piece of cake to travel to Kuantan. From KL, just hit the Karak Highway and join the East Coast Expressway for about 200 over KMs, and turn off at the Gambang Exit. Turn left at the main intersection and you’re on the old trunk road, and just keep going till you see the military airport. You are there, simple. From Kuantan, even easier, just take the old trunk road out of Kuantan and you’ll find the military base. Just be careful of the signs, it’s pretty dilapidated so you might miss it. It’s called ‘Kelab Rekreasi TUDM’ which is in Malay, translated to ‘We-Like-To-Lose-Big-Jet-Engines-Worth-Billions-To-Luis-Suarezs-Home-Country’. No.Of course not. Jeez.

Anyway, travel is no fuss, I like golf courses that are easy to access, and preferably next to the main road, in case it is so horrendous we need to make a quick exit before dying of self inflicted asphyxiation.  So why only 2/5? Read on and prepared to be amazed.

Price ( 1/5)

At first I thought RM20 was a great price to pay for the course. I looked at the scorecard, and yes, it was 9 holes only but still, it was ok. Until she told me I was forced to take a buggy, for another RM20. I wanted to walk, having lugged a trolley with me, but she said only from 5:30 onwards. Looking out, there didn’t seem to be any living creature existing on the course, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get this lady to relent. At the end, I forked out RM40, got into the ugliest buggy in the world, a shocking pink buggy and chugged out into the course.

RM40 for this course? 9 Hole? No. After going through it, I rather spend my RM40 watching Titanic 4 times in a row non-stop. For the record, I rather be zapped by a hundred electric eels than to watch Titanic even one time. Go figure.

First thoughts

Have you ever had the thought when you committed yourself to something, such as bungy jumping, or base jumping, that right at the ledge,only two words form your entire thought pattern and life philosophy?

“Oh Crap.”

Those are the treasured words that bombarded me over and over again as I stood at the first tee box (or what I thought was the first, since there were no signs). A distant flight tower was the only feature on the first hole, and it resembled a football field, converted into a golf course. And football field here isn’t Wembley mind you, it’s like that SS2 neighbourhood football field, that is filled with rusted nails, sand patches and the itinerant flasher who will open up his coat to show you his dongs and then cackle insanely.

Service ( 2/5)

Despite my disagreement with the lady to charge me 40 bucks, she did put me out in the course extremely quickly. Take money, give change along with a photostated score card and boom, get out of my sight, take one of the 4 buggies available. Yes. 4. Got into the pink buggy and I’m off.

The pro shop is inhabited by this weed smoking old fellow, and you can only stay there 10 minutes top, because—I am not kidding—the entire room smells of thinner. I.e the poisonous liquid to take away paint. I almost died, but saw a whole lot of old clubs for sale. As in, seriously OLD. This guy is a vintage collector dream. He has old persimmon woods, hand crafted to perfection. He has Tun Razak’s (our second Prime Minister) old clubs, he has even an old Winfield mallet that was the great grandfather of the famous odyssey two ball. I spent more than 10 minutes in there, and just as I was about to pass out due to thinner poisoning, I paid for an old persimmon 3 wood and crawled out of that pro shop barely alive, but losing 5 years of my lifespan. The wood looks good though.

Fairways (-1/5)

Ok, so to the course. The fairways are possibly—with the exception of Selesa Hills golf course—the WORST fairways you will ever see in this part of the planet. The grass was long and thick, there was no difference between fairway and rough, it was just patches of dirt, thick grass, patches of sand, thick grass etc. I have never experienced such an awful piece of crap before until TUDM Recreation Club. Pictures will say it all.

Greens (0 /5)

I was surprised that the first hole green was quite well maintained. It was very hard, very fast with not so subtle breaks. But from hole 2 onwards, it was like descending into the very heart of Crap Land. Bare greens, sometimes filled with dirt, the third hole had a standing sprinkler turned on, with no life in sight. Terrible experience.

Rough ( -1/5)

Absolutely, the worst rough you will ever find in Malaysia. Hole 3, a 190m par 3, I hooked a little, my ball nestling into the rough at the side of the green. Using my 60 degree, I chopped down on the heavy grass and what happened next was every golfer’s nightmare. No, not Christina Kim in thongs (apparently, that would be most Gilagolf Reader’s dream), but rocks and stones flying out along with the ball. The stones were underneath the dirt. Big stones! I looked at my 60 degree and let out a vampiric wail of anguish. TUDM, you are a stupid, stupid course!!!

Aside from the asinine nature of the rough in this horrific course, the sand bunkers are an automatic free drop. Why? Yes, they are filled with stones. Yes, they are ugly as Quasimodo’s rear-end. Yes, they are unplayable. But worse, all of them had holes in them. I thought these were for drainage, until, on closer exploration, they were all dugged at the side of the bunkers on the mound, and naturally made…by something long, slithering, and possibly poisonous.

Aesthetics ( 0/5)

Ok, let me try to put this in context. Let’s say, you mix these two:

+

=

And wait, after that, mix whatever comes out from those two with this:

And you have a general idea of about 10% of the ugliness of this course. This course, is by far, absolutely, horrendously hideous. At least, Frasers Hill had some saving grace in terms of looks, as did Selesa Hills. Bukit Beruntung still resembles the faeces of a skunk, but this one? This one takes the cake.

TUDM Recreation Club golf is absolutely the most horrific looking course in the known galaxy. So far. Look at it. Seriously, what sort of course is this??!? Why is it existing? If the RMAF were to accidentally drop 1500 bombs onto this place (which might be possible…as in, the ‘accident part’, I won’t be at all surprised), it would make the course look better after the bombing. Flat, uninspiring, completely awful maintenance sums up TUDM for you.

Fun Factor (0/5)

The first three holes were had slight variety. From 4,5,6,7,8,9 on wards, you feel like Ground Hog Day, repeating the same holes over and over again. I am not kidding. Every hole looks the same, because generally, they are playing parallel to each other. There’s the occasional drain here and there, resembling the marshes of Mordor, but otherwise, the same.

I stopped having fun after the course destroyed my 60 degree. Wait, actually, I stopped having fun the moment I escaped the Pro Shop of death. This course is a cruel joke. How can anyone have fun in this place? This is probably about the same experience as bathing in freezing water in the Himalayas. No wonder our RMAF guys are so depressed. Their own golf course resembles some war torn battlefield in Afghanistan.

Conclusion

What can I say? After the final tee off, I quickly packed my bags, saluted the guys at the gate and sped off as quickly as possible, trying to wash away all memories of this forsaken golf course. This makes Frasers Hills look like Augusta. I mean, with proper maintenance, who knows, it might be a reasonable 9 hole course for quickie games like mine, but if I were to select between playing this course, and watching Titanic for a week, followed by the god awful Australia for another week; I might select the latter, after which I will likely be warded in an asylum.

The good: The only good word I can think off that’s associated with this pile of dung is “Good Riddance.”

The bad: Every single thing about this course is bad. Well, maybe except for the poison chamber Pro Shop with all the vintage clubs and putters. Otherwise, take heed. Any club that has a gigantic golf ball with wings as its insignia is probably slightly lower than your dog’s poop in terms of prestige.

The skinny: 3 of 40 divots (7.5%). I thought it would be impossible to find a course worse than Fraser’s Hill, but here you have it. Officially, the worst golf course in Malaysia…TUDM Kuantan Recreation Club, or in Malay, for those Googling: Kelab Rekreasi TUDM Kuantan!!

TUDM Kuantan Score Card

TUDM Kuantan Information

Address:

Kelab Rekreasi TUDM Kuantan

Pengkalan TUDM Kuantan,

25990 Kuantan,

Pahang.

Contact: +609-5384282

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Gilanalysis 15: Staffield West and South

Handicap:20

Gross: 95

Net: 75

Verdict: I don’t understand why my clubs don’t come to work together?

What Happened + Mini Review

Staffield has always been a course that pretty consistently gives us high marks. Surprisingly, this is the first time I ever got a chance to review the West course. So aside from a gilanalysis, this is going to be a mini review of Staffield West. So away we go!

Some courses are easy on the eyes, the same way some women are, or some cars are: they don’t overwhelm you with massive good looks and just welcomes you home like a best friend, neither do they resemble a discarded banana skin on their best day. Case in point:

Something homely like Ginnifer:

vs something not so homely:

You don’t ever wanna get caught in a course that resembles the second one….take that, Bukit Beruntung, Frasers and Selesa Hills!

Staffield is Ginnifer Goodwin, welcoming, relaxed, homely…like a guy’s best girl friend whom you won’t fall in love with, but whom you like to hang around and talk crap to and crack stupid jokes with. Ah, good old college days.

I digress. Once you are on the first tee on the homely, inviting, best friend Ginnifer West course, you’ll be watched by no less than 20 people (as the tee off for the North course is NEXT to you), but looking at the HUGE fairway on the opening par 5 will make you feel a whole lot better…and we did, with each of us stripping down the fairway and strutting to our buggies like we were pros. Obviously, we all descended into the duffing, topping and whiffing hackers we all are in reality after that. But hey, first tee jitters: BEGONE!

The second hole is an inviting straight par 4, which after a good drive, I was set up with an 8 that I proceeded to duff. 3 on, 3 putted and back to life, back to reality of Golf Hacking.

The par 4 third is a really very picturesque hole, with water on the left of the green, and a grand view over the next hole, which has an intimidating tee shot for hookers. Thankfully I have seemed to graduate from a hooker on my misses to a slicer…which might seem like a strange progress, but it’s true what they say, you can talk to a fade but not to a draw, meaning, slice misses seems a little better for me in keeping the ball in play. I mean, have you ever duck hooked before? It doesn’t stand a chance, it just goes 50 meters or so and skitters into a drink or kills someone in the next flight. A banana slice miss at least goes further and higher, and at least you can align yourself for that miss. It probably makes no sense, but nothing much in my golf game makes sense.

At this point, after starting with a par, I have proceeded to make a mess of my irons and my putts to double bogey 3 holes, before sorting out with a bogey on the par 5 5th, a narrow tee shot that opens up considerably after that. It’s surrounded with forest so, as usual, keep the dang ball on the fairway and you’ll manage this.

The par 3 8th (like the one on southern) is probably the best looking hole for us. It’s a short par 3 at 130 meters, with water on the left, and an elevated tee shot. I didn’t take a picture because a phone call came, but trust me, it’s still an intimidating 130 meters to the green.

The last hole, like Southerm requires you to blast past the water to the dogleg right, elevated green, which makes it awesomely hard to reach in two. But it passed what we call ‘Last Hole Test’, which is to make sure the final hole doesn’t resemble the underside of a toilet seat (such as Harvard’s final hole), so people leave with good impression. Staffield West is a must play.

Why I Sucked

Putts. It doesn’t look like I had too many 3 putts, but I made a lot of good chips that stopped within 3-5 feet of the hole. I missed, I think 3 3 footers, and 2 more within 4-5 feet. Putts I should be making in my sleep just didn’t fall.Plus the greens were devilish. Not bad, but difficult, for some reason. The speed was quick on the first few holes, and then it slowed down considerably, causing us to putt like lizards on cocaine.

IRONS. Especially my stupid pitching wedge, 9 iron and 8 iron. These are scoring irons, the bread and butter of golfers. And I managed to play HORRENDOUS with them. Two GIRs means CRAP irons. While my driver was working overtime, my iron days was best summed up on the easy hole 14. I had about 110 meters left to the green. An easy pitching wedge in hand and I completely whiffed it into bunker. 15th, same, easy fairway 9 iron big pull to the left and a duff chip caused my double bogey. And hole 16, an easy pitching wedge again push right. I don’t get it…this never happens on the range, where I can hit 6/10 times the driving range green and come here to play like a Phillipino Tarsier being jabbed with morphine.

Not So Sucked

If there was a positive, driver would be it. I drove very well overall, except for a few bad ones here and there, but still managed to escape those due to the generosity and welcoming nature of Ginnifer Staffield. My driver distance has been shortened due to my insistence on playing for a fade instead of draw, so that my misses are slices instead of hooks (read above for a full dissertation of this amazing strategy), but I’m getting it more in play, and I am SURE sooner or later, when my putting, driver, irons and short game come together, I will be able to pull of a 39 on a 9 hole like I did in Harvard. Some day.

What to Work On

I am almost this close to giving up practicing on the range, and save up my money to buy an iphone or something. It’s quite useless to play so well on range and hack around like a grave digger when it actually matters. I was fortunate to be playing on a Ginnifer course today….if I brought this game to a discarded banana skin course like Bukit Beruntung, I would have shot like 10 strokes worse.

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Harvard GCC

Introduction

It’s been a while since I got to play on any new courses, hence the gilagolf updates have been generally about analysis and random nonsense about anything under the sun, that probably have left fellow gilagolfers feeling a little delusioned about where this humble site is heading…fear not, as long as there remains a course to be hacked in (and if budget or sponsors permit) and out of Malaysia, gilagolf will continue to exist, to bring realistic reviews and crap courses to the light of day.

And here we have Harvard Golf and Country Club, the pride of Kedah. And just in case you’re wondering if there’s any association with this Harvard:

This will set your mind at ease:

The vast difference of class is only obvious if you scrutinize the awesome tradition in their entrance into their respective hallowed grounds. For the thick headed, I am obviously being incredibly sarcastic.

Actually, to give Harvard (the Kedah one) credit, they do have a reasonably OK website, which means it’s far better than most of the courses reviewed on this site. But they can forget about a random googler ending up in their site by searching ‘Harvard’, because it’s probably number 1,128,453 on the search list. More on the website later. Now, to the course!

Travel ( 2/5)

OK, if you’re gonna start a website, for goodness sakes, put some decent direction to your place. It’s not as if we know where the heck is this elusive Harvard golf course by reputation…or is it considered so exclusive that it needs to be hidden from the world?

But I’ll be honest here, I was actually searching for Permaipura Golf course to play, but because of Permaipura’s inability to place any obvious signs whatsoever to the transient golfer to see, I ended up shooting past and after seeing the Harvard Golf Course sign, quickly turned into it before I ended up at the border of Thailand. Great signs Permaipura..you haven’t even been reviewed and your travel is already a 0.

Anyhoos, there’s always GPS (which I did not have) and it’s a straightforward, if not a little long: North South Highway. Head towards Sungai Petani. Pass Cinta Sayang on the right, wish you were playing there, then drive straight on and exit and the Sungai Petani (U) turnoff. ‘U’ stands for Utara, meaning North.  Once turned off, turn right at the traffic light, and keep going the trunk road. You will pass a small town eventually and just look for the signs that says Harvard on the right. Turn right and boom, you’re there. It’s a 2 for being straight forward and for collecting all the lost souls looking for that dratted Permaipura sign.

Price ( 2/5)

Saturday morning, I know, it’s not easy to get cheap price, even in KL. In kinrara, it would be around 100 plus with a voucher, and in Harvard, I got to play for RM60, with a buggy as well using my special voucher. It’s reasonable, but as we would later see, if it’s a reasonable course, but for a course that resembles UPM or worse, that horrendouse Royal Johor Crap Course we just played in late last year, RM98 (without voucher), is a tad bit steep.

First thoughts

The course is really old. In fact, it was built in 1927, making it one of the oldest golf courses in Malaysia…Royal Selangor could be the oldest at 1893, but I am told there is another older course, I don’t know where. But hey, 1927 is 84 years old, which is pretty long, so there’s gotta be some pretty good tradition here and hopefully the review won’t bash the course up too badly.

First of, the course looked extremely familiar….it could have been UPM, or God forbid, the Royal Johor Course, in which case it would be better to simply apply electrocution to oneself than to play on such courses, but I suppose old golf courses pretty much resemble the same.

Service ( 2/5)

Now, the service was pretty ok, as the girl behind the counter was kind enough to find me a solution when the buggies were all out. After giving her my standard story of driving all the way from KL to play on the great Harvard course, the oldest course in Kedah with all it’s fine tradition, she convinced the marshal to hand me his buggy to put me on my merry way. So why 2? Because aside from the good human service, the rest of the service, especially the buggies, are as lousy as TMNet’s customer service, which generally is just lower than being serviced by a rabid hyena frothing from disease. The buggies, all made in 1927 using pulley systems, takes at least 10 seconds to crank up and start. I am NOT kidding. In fact, the poor guy I was playing with, Edward, with his wife were stuck with a buggy that took twice as long as mine to crank up. We would each respectively step on our throttle and wait, while chit chatting about politics and see which buggy starts up first. They definitely take being the ‘oldest’ course in Kedah seriously. At times, you just wish you had a hole on the buggy floor so you can Flintstone your way through the dratted course.

Fairways (2/5)

You really cannot expect a whole lot from a course that calls itself Harvard. I am not even going to go further on why the name is after the most prestigious instituition in the entire history of the known world, next to Penang Char Kueh Teow. The fairways were not atrocious (please, bring back memories of the mother of all crap course, Bukit Beruntung), it was functional cow grass, but nothing much in terms of proper maintenance.

Greens ( 4/5)

Of all the surprising thing I learnt in this trip, and this includes the fact that the Lorong Selamat Char Kueh Teow in Penang is actually crap, the greens in Harvard is actually very good. And I don’t mean it in a sarcastic sense. I expressed my surprise (akin to finding a diamond ring in the middle of a pile of cowdung) and my member playing partner, Edward (the one who had to crank his buggy 20 seconds) proudly declared that the greens were the pride of Harvard. Which is really saying something, because as I looked around Harvard, it does seem to labour somewhat to maintain the course with a total of 1 person in the payroll. The greens, though a little slow, were consistent through the course and had very good roll. The undulation also gives some variety and overall, very nice experience on the greens.

Rough (1/5)

The rough was bad though. Leaves strewn all over the place, it’s obvious that maintenance budget has been slashed to under RM100 per year, poor guys. The one thing I found extremely annoying were the bunkers. They were absolutely horrible. The size of rocks and stones there made it impossible to hit a bunker shot without denting the clubs, and in one instance I did. From then on, it was an auto matic free drop whenever it entered a bunker. And of course, the eternal fight with wild boards continue. Almost every hole bears the battle scars, wild boars digging up the rough, looking for grubs. I hate you, wild boars! I’ll make a soup out of your entire species!! But still, the course has the prerogative to defend itself against these attacks and sadly, Harvard utterly failed. Come on, Harvard. If you excel in the green, it doesn’t mean you need to balance your Yin and Yang with horrendous rough. Why can’t you stay excellent for all time??

Aesthetics (2 /5)

There is a saying of ‘growing old gracefully’, which is to say, people who get older looks better. Harvard isn’t one of them. Frankly, the aesthetics wasn’t extremely ugly, nor was it very pretty. It’s simple. If you have rubber trees as part of your landscaping, you are not going to look very nice. Harvard has live rubber trees that are still being tapped as part of its course. Not funny when it stinks. And there are certainly some holes that purely stank of wild boar shit. The rough was of course, full of evidence of the wild boars, so it has to be their crap that filled the air. Yuck.

The saving grace is the Guthrie nine. The first hole of Guthrie nine actually looks nice, with towering, aged trees lining the fairway. It gets slightly prettier with some water features in the later holes, but they were all stagnant.

The worse is the last hole, par 5 on Guthrie. It is UGLY. It’s not a pretty hole at all. First of all, from the tee, you can only see the fairway as it hills over the other side. Once crossed the hill, you have the awesome sight of one ugly club house and a horrendously underwhelming green protected by a murky swamp, and lined with skeletons from dead golfers. What a rubbish ending, Harvard.

And ok, you know how annoying it is when the website gives bad information, or outrightly lies about their course. Which is why gilagolf is here, as the beacon of truth to expose these lies. In the intro (http://www.harvardhotel.com.my/intro.html) it says:

With its cool mountain air that calms the senses and hilly terrains that invigorate the soul, Kedah’s idyllic nature became popular amongst the northern elite.

That’s complete BS, sorry. What cool mountain air? The nearest mountain is the one you can see on the 16th, 17th hole, which is about 800 miles away. The last I remembered, I was being fried like a Vietnamese cockroach as I tried in vain to get my dratted buggy to start. And the terrain isn’t hilly at all. There’s hardly any elevation on the course, making it as mouldy as a 15 year old bread. It’s just a field that happens to have a few holes and flags. I don’t know about the northern elite, if it’s so, Harvard needs to revamp its images and fix their stupid buggies.

This is my favourite:

Where east meets west and modern convenience complements Mother nature, Harvard Jerai is your ideal gateway to relax and fraternise. Welcome to Harvard Jerai. The land where “Eagles” rest, stay and play.

I don’t get the east meets west. What the tarnation do you mean? Is there some sort of Chinese/Siamese influence in your architecture, along with british colonial designs? All I see is a hut for the club house that bears remarkable resemblance of my mechanic’s car workshop in Old Town. And really, if this isn’t another golf course that promotes ‘Eagles’ as if just by saying that word, it would turn us all hackers into ultra professional Tiger Woods golfers. Try it. “Eagle”. Darnit I am still duffing the ball!!

Fun Factor ( 2/5)

I ended up in Harvard by mistake thanks to Permaipura’s inability to direct lost golfers. Harvard isn’t extremely difficult, and the Guthrie nine does sport  huge expanses of fairways for some holes. I was scoring very well for the Guthrie, starting with 5 pars over 6 holes, and a chip in bogey save on the index 2 16th. I ended shooting my best 9 hole score at 39…which balanced out my terrible front nine of 48. There were many bail out opportunities in Guthrie nine, so I think for a guy with a crocked but reasonably long swing, it presents some scoring opportunities derived from lousy drives.

Was it fun overall? Not really. The rough was a real let down, coupled with badly maintained bunkers, I was just looking forward for the round to end eventually. The real letdown, was the ending hole on Guthrie. It’s as if the designers just sort of gave up on that hole and decided, heck it, the golfers are probably having mirages of Catherine Zeta Jones by now they won’t even know the difference if we put a chimpanzee in front of them.

Conclusion

Harvard is a mix bag. Some good stuff like the greens are real surprises, especially in such a secluded area that you’d think even David Livingstone won’t come. The customer service was friendly, but the buggy was crappy. The course overall was in ok condition, but when you have dirt roads and mud for your buggy track, you know that Harvard is probably not the right name to give this club.

The good: Travel is pretty deep in, but once there you can get on the course pretty quickly; the greens are in good condition and consistent throughout; Guthrie nine plays easier to me, and it looks way better than Jerai nine (Harvard nine is close, indefinitely, and the forest has reclaimed it).

The bad: The buggies truly suck, you need 10 seconds everytime you stop to restart it; rough is horrible, sand is unplayable; horrible ending hole on Guthrie; an absolutely daft name to call a golf course; aesthetically resembles the rearend of a Mongolian Llama, and a terribly deceitful website.

The skinny: 17 of 40 divots (42.5%). Wow, Harvard just avoided being categorized as Waste of Time and Money. This is a real borderline case. I don’t think I’ll ever return to Harvard unless forced to, but it really depends on how crap/good the other golf courses in this region is. Suffice to say, if you had the chance, you might want to try another course but if you get lost searching for Permaipura, I suppose this is a reasonable alternative to play on.

Harvard GCC Scorecard

Harvard GCC Information

Address:Harvard Golf Resort (Jerai) Berhad

Harvard Golf and Country Club

No 6 Persiaran Guthrie

Harvard Suasana Resort 08100 Bedong Kedah

Contact: +604-4586887

Fax: +604-4586782

Email: nirmala.vijayan@simedarby.com

Website: http://www.harvardhotel.com.my/