Where as for us, Hackers, to say something doesn’t fit the eye is even more ridiculous, because (speaking for myself), I suck at this game. I don’t have a consistent swing or a predictable ball flight, or even a guarantee that I would be able to hit the dang ball…there is no way a course set up has any inkling to my game, because at times it flies left, at times it flies right, at times it doesnt make past the red tees.

But if I were to say a course that doesn’t ‘fit my cock-eye’, it’d be Kajang Hill. I don’t know what about it…I just suck more than usual playing this course!

We teed up on the first nine and I actually played very well…aside from starting the 3 holes like a monkey, I know why: The first hole, a good drive saw my ball plugged into the rough. Playing competition, no way I could get it out. Double. Second hole, pull near the trees. Instead of being in the bunker or at least on the ground…it was literally perched on the roots! It took 3 shots to get out!

The back nine…Oh gosh. I was 11 over 4 holes. I OB-ed the first 3 holes with massive pulls, and almost OB-ed the fourth when my ball was stuck under the ledge in a bunker. WHAT THE…after that, I played good golf, but my gosh, what a string of lousy first 3 holes in my nines!

And this is not the first time. Previous adventures in Kajang Hill yielded the same result…white tee, blue tee no difference. Blue I struggle with the length. White, I struggle with the accuracy, constantly blasting my ball over the fairway OB.

I’m not saying Kajang Hill sucks. It doesn’t…but it’s slowly degrading since nobody bothers about maitenance. It’s closing down end of this year due to housing development I believe. What a crap-shoot. I need to play one more time here to redeem my pride!

Handicap:20

Gross: 99

Net: 79

Verdict: Pulling all the way into OB….

Handicap:20

Gross: 87

Net: 67

Verdict: Once the driver is sorted, everything works!

What Happened

Staffield has always been somewhat of a favourite to us. But after a horrendous customer service experience (see the reviewed write up here), we’re doubtful if we should ever return here. In fact, Staffield has been relegated from a Must Play course to a Not Too shabby, in the only measurement system that makes sense to all golfers: The GilaChart.

The course remains an excellent golf course, no doubt, but that doesn’t give the golf management a reason to treat their customers only slightly better than a pile of dog crap, and slightly lower than how you’d treat mosquitoes. To justify them, only the golf manager sucks actually, the rest of the service blokes are OK.

The first game was not as bad as it seems. My first triple was due to 2 duffed chip, possibly due to morning jitters and lack of breakfast. The two double bogeys came from bad 3 putts. Staffield’s greens remain enigmatic as ever. It’s in good condition, but the breaks and the undulation, as well as the speed really just gets the best of us. The caddy says 8.5 on the stimp, but I doubt she realises what that means at all. Greens were FAST!! I don’t know how 8.5 is supposed to roll but I always thought it was slow, because KRPM plays to about 8 and it’s as slow as traffic in Tun Razak at 5 pm during Ramadhan month.

The back nine first game was where everything collapsed. Triple on the 11th due to pulling into the water. From 13 to 17, a stretch of five holes, I pulled almost every tee shot, especially with the driver, and each pull landed me either behind trees, hazards, or OB, water. By the time I reached the green, I was four on, five on, flustered, red with rage and obviously about to tomahawk my new driver into the grave. The worst was the awesome 16th, marked as 160meters, but ridiculously under measured by Staffield. We each used 3 wood, and only one managed to clear the bunkers and on. I plopped mine, yet again into water. Staffield, that hole plays 180 or more. No way it’s 160!

The only good thing came on the last, when I hit a 3 wood from the fairway to 5 meters of the green, putted and almost sank in for eagle.

And once all the lessons were learnt, the second game, driving went from being as curly as Rory’s hair to straight as an arrow on the back nine, as I shot 42, an improvement of a massive 9 shots on my back nine. I played the 87 to a thoroughly enjoyable golf, hitting irons in, and birdieing the 5th from the fairway bunker. The final hole was a replica, my 3 wood about 8 – 10 metres away and barely missing the 4 foot birdie putt. Argh!

But overall, except for memories of lousy golf manager in Staffield, it was the best golf I’ve played in a long time.

Why I Sucked

Easy. The first game, the new Hibore XLS was pulling all the way. Couldn’t figure it out, until the last hole, when it all clicked. I was addressing it too closed and grip too strong, because the S9-1 was a slicer, so I had to compensate for the slice with these. Hi-Bore XLS is draw biased all the way, so after neutraling the face and going easier on the grip, balls started booming straight and long. My mind still plays tricks on me occasionally expecting the ball to curve left to right, but the driver did its job, 9 fairways, 6 GIRs.

Putter was hot and cold. I missed a lot of putts within 5 feet, but managed to also hit long putts here and there, like the 8 foot curler for birdie on the 5th.

Not So Sucked

The new driver sucked at first, but started becoming my best pal by the time I was done.

What to Work On

Really exciting to work with the new driver, looking forward to the next game! Hacking time!

Handicap:20

Gross: 93

Net: 73

Verdict: Finally, a good round at KRPM!

What Happened

The new swing has been coming together over the weeks…I’m a lot more confident hitting my 3 wood off the deck and hitting my driver. I now carry 2 drivers: my S9-1 Cobra for accuracy, and my old Hi Bore when I need to blast it. Kinda works. Kinda. But better to get a driver that does both, right? Great excuse to go shopping.

Anyways, remember those times when we see Tiger play horribly with his new swing and yet he keeps saying, “I am almost there, I feel good etc” and we think he’s on weed or something since he keeps shanking the ball? Now I get it…you can have a not so good score (like today) but yet know that you’ve played well and except for a few brain farts or stupid stunts you wanted to pull because no wager was on the table.

First nine was pretty controlled. Double bogey on 2nd was with a way ward pull, and on the 4th, I drove the ball and it reached the water again by bouncing off the cart path! So I 3 to the fringe, four on and two putted. The other double bogey was on the tough index 1 when I hooked into the woods.

Back nine, again, I drove the ravine and failed to clear. But after 3 pars straight, the game kinda collapsed a little with triple on the tough 14th–I pushed into the trees and couldn’t escape alive–and the easy 15th, after dunking my ball into the water and 3 putting like an idiot.

The last 3 holes were the toughest, and I hit a drive that again hit the cart path but this time ended up 110 metres from the hole, which I proceeded to fat my pitching and waste a good chance to par the tough hole. 17th was just a stupid mess, because lying 220m I just tried my luck with my 3 wood to clear the water, about 190 – 200 to clear. I can do that about 1 out of 300 times probably….and today wasn’t the time. Normally I would have laid up but what the heck, I only play so often without a wager, so lets try the impossible. I still escaped with a double so it was ok I guess.

Last hole, I actually lost my first ball with a slice with my Hi Bore. Bye Bye HiBore, no more use for you then! My third off the tee with my cobra was fine, then hit a pure 3 wood to 80 metres from the hole. And a so-so sand wedge to about 25 feet, on one of the toughest contoured greens in KRPM. From the top tier, I watch my putt roll, hit the hump and curled all the way in for the one of the finest feeling in life….a long, curling putt on a multi tiered green. Ah.

Why I Sucked

Probably I was half-serious but that’s a bad excuse. If I hadn’t tried some stupid stunts, I would have probably scored better. But the driver was working fine…my KPI these days is to hit 50% fairways and 5 or more GIRs. My putter was hot, so the only issues were my iron plays again that sucked. Definitely not Iron Man.

Not So Sucked

Putter hot. Driver S9-1 was hot. Hi Bore was unfortunately crap. Time to get the One Driver to rule them all.

What to Work On

Waiting for the new driver to arrive. Should be fun!

Handicap:20

Gross: 97

Net: 77

Verdict: Getting there, could have been a lot better

What Happened

So, armed with a new swing, and two drivers now instead of one, I tried a round at my old friend KRPM Lakes….and although the result seems crappy, it was actually a good bad round if there is such a thing. Teeing up the back nine, my drive almost crossed the ravine. Drop for 3, stuck a 3 wood to the fringe, duff a chip and two putted. On the easy 11th, took out a driver and hit it so hard it went into the lake at 220m. Drop for 3, 4 on two putt. 12th, pulled my six, duffed another chip and 3 on two putted. On the easy par 4 13th, it’s easier now, with the huge tree chopped down, opening up the tee shot immensely. By habit, we all hit our ball right nevertheless. I had a good lie, in the rough, but jammed my wedge shot twice into the tree, and four on two putted.

So without actually hitting a bad drive, I managed to double bogey the first four holes! The last three holes are traditionally the toughest, and played that way, en route to a 51 on the front. Thanks to some really stupid 3-wood shots. However, I played a lot better on the back and didn’t mess up until the last hole, when I sliced my second shot hybrid to the bushes on the right and couldn’t get up and down. Otherwise, believe it or not, I was driving solid. It’s just too short to tackle Rahman Putra.

I’ll probably need to look for a replacement driver that is accurate and long. Ebay, here I come!

Why I Sucked

Chipping and pitching was off and on. Weirdly, the two pars I got was from my PW pitches. But countless duffs and tops is really annoying the heck out of my game.

Also, I changed putters again, and obviously didn’t work very well especially my front nine.

And the 3-wood, for some reason killed me, as I topped several shots especially on the closing holes on the front nine.

Not So Sucked

Driver. Or rather, Drivers. Like the tubby Phil Mickleson, I have now jammed two drivers into my bag. The Cobra with the whippy shaft cheated to me by that unprofessional MST guy, and me being the bigger idiot to listen to MST salesman–and my ancient HiBore…which honestly is so long, it’s ridiculous. It just can’t fly straight and the sweet spot is so tiny! The Cobra flies with a fade and reaches the upper stratosphere, and pops down with almost no roll, about 200m or less, but it’s straight.

What to Work On

Chipping and pitching, and stop being such a epileptic chimpanzee 50 meters into the green.

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 59^th 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 14^th 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 11^th and Par on 13^th and saved bogey on 14^th and 15^th. 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 12^th 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 17^th 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 2^nd 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 1^st Nine Old and 2^nd 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 4^th 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 9^th 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 10^th, under a humongous Ehwa tree. The second par 4 result was from my caddy’s wonderful and perfect read, missed my par on the 12^th by 1cm, and parred the index 2 par 5 13^th after wildly driving it so far left that I borrowed a fairway from the old course.

The closing 18^th 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 4^th 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

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 4^th 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

Introduction

Ah, Bukit Beruntung. Every single golfer in Malaysia has traversed through this club at one time or another. Why? Because it’s cheap. And it has 36 holes. And whoever plays here is likely a beginner, hence the embarrassment of hitting a crap shot is not as bad as say, playing in KGNS, or Seri Selangor, where there are about 2 million people gawking at you and if you play too slow, they will likely start pumping in a hundred balls in your direction.

Beruntung, actually was where it all began for me, and I suppose for many of us. Before Kinrara, before Bangi, even before the stupid BU and the even stupider Bukit Jelutong, there was the one crap course to rule them all: Bukit Beruntung.

I recall as a beginner, my second time playing golf, and playing on the East Course, to the point that I was in a delirium after hitting my 436^th ball into the water or into the jungle. That was possibly the last time I ever set foot on the course, a magnificent 8 years ago.

We are not sure why we haven’t made our way to Beruntung for so long, but finally, because we have no where else to play on a Saturday morning, we chose the cheapest golf course to play in…and so, to Beruntung we went.

Travel ( 3/5)

One of golf’s greatest mystery is this: Why does it seem like it takes eons to travel to courses up north, as opposed to going to courses down south. I think there’s some huge physics theory at play here. Everytime we head north, it seems like we’re travelling to the World’s End. Possibly, everything beyond Rawang is Crap Country, and that’s why it feels so excruciating long. However, when we head over to Nilai or Seremban, it’s like, hey, we’re there, that was so fast! So traveling to Beruntung is still a pain, but what we like about it is that it’s near the highway. Once turn off, you can access it pretty easy. Compare it with possibly the two most stupid golf course access in the entire planet: Bukit Unggul and Tasik Puteri. Both of these courses are so deep inside the jungle or housing estate, you need a map to find your way there. Obviously, there’s no reason to it, except to make your life miserable as a golfer. For Tasik Puteri, at least the course is reasonable. For Bukit Unggul, I have decided to become the main antagonist to it and have so far discouraged all my groups to go there only if you want to die. Serious. Bukit Unggul sucks.

Whoa, carried away. Anyways, here’ s the general direction to Bukit Beruntung. We got it off their website (http://www.bbgcr.com) , which by the way was recently selected as the world’s worst golf website, beating even golfforthecolorblindandcompletelyblindpeople.com. Congratz Beruntung for a site that looks like shit-ake!

Price ( 2/5)

You seriously cannot beat RM60 for a Saturday morning. What can you do? Elsewhere, everyone is charging an arm and a leg just for you to play this game, so when a price like that in a reasonable accessible course comes up, there’s no complaining.

They charge RM100 for public holiday. You are better off using that RM100 to purchase cyanide and eating it for dinner than to play on this sorry excuse for a golf course. Downgraded from 3 to 2!

First thoughts

Like I said, coming back to beruntung is like meeting your ex-girlfriend. You know, the one you dumped because she looked like a greasy hamburger and snorted when she laughs and in general made your life a living hell by constantly challenging your mother to an arm wrestle contest. I don’t know. I’m just saying. And then finding out that this hamburger girlfriend of yours has become a little prettier, snorts a little lesser and generally don’t torment your mother anymore with such ridiculous challenges.

In short, Beruntung didn’t look half as bad as I thought.

Sorry, Beruntung East is the second course (the first being Tasik Puteri) that has been re-reviewed and downgraded due to its exceptionally sorry and lousy condition as we played it on 2 May 2011. Bukit Beruntung is by far, the CRAPPIEST COURSE EVER and deserve a thousand course deaths by the blade of my 7-iron. It is irresistibly horrendous and for those of you who are stubborn or foolish enough to ignore this warning NOT TO PLAY at Bukit Beruntung, you are better off driving six inch rusted nails into your trakea.

Bukit Beruntung Golf Course SUCKS.

Service ( 0/5)

Kudos to Beruntung, who did not force any caddies on us, and managed to kick us into the golf course in the fastest time possible. Of course, the buggies are still former army jeeps from 1942, but what’s there to complain. In fact, service was so good/bad, that there were no marshals to be found, so we really can’t gauge this properly.

Easy checkin and bam before you know it, you’re on the course. It’s a nice change for us, after undergoing the Nazi service we faced in Glenmarie and of course, the most ultimately incompetent group of shit-ake people in Bukit Jawi.

And guess what? The Mines company (as in the Mines group, the guys that brought us the amazing white elephant Mines Golf Resort), just bought over the management of Beruntung, so expect to see some changes!

Downgraded 3 to JIRO! Please, please, please. Will someone tell us if there is ANYBODY in Bukit Beruntung that is actually maintaining this God Forsaken piece of crap? The Mines took over sometime back, but unconfirmed reports that the person handling the maintenance has gotten so traumatised over the whole experience that he is contemplating heading over to the MACC building and going over to the fourth floor for a ‘leap’ of faith. Mines has given up on Beruntung, and has preferred to move the entire maintenance budget to tending to growing tulips and magnolias randomly on the Karak highway….which will have more effect.

In other words, the service doesn’t suck. It’s just NON-EXISTENT. In fact, at one point the ‘buggy’ tracks were so filled with wild boar urine that we simply started driving on the course itself, and of course, with only monkeys as marshals, we didn’t have too much problems. Stupid Bukit Beruntung.

Fairways ( -1/5)

I don’t know if it’s the Mines ownership or what, but this was where we immediately saw value. You might think 2 is actually a sucky score, but you haven’t seen Beruntung at its worst. It would be -20 or so. So the improvement was this: no plugged balls despite soggy weather; and a reasonably playing experience from the fairway (when we can find the darn fairway, that is).

The fairways is downgraded from 2 to -1 due to the amazing tendency for balls to get lost on the fairway. Nothing is more worse than courses that punishes good shots and Bukit Beruntung excels at it, because the maintenance people are too lazy to work and has left the course to ruins.

ARGH!! THE WORSE FAIRWAYS EVER! Bukit Beruntung is a terrible, horrible experience for any golfer. It swallows up good tee shots, it is as anorexically narrow, and it is HORRIBLY maintained, with long blades of grass (the ones that sticks to your socks and pants) all over…sorry, Bukit Beruntung, you cannot charge RM100 when your course resembles the Dead Marshes of Mordor. Hole 1, plugged ball on fairway.  Hole 3, great drive on fairway swallowed up by the course. Hole 6, super good second shot is lost on the fairway. Hole 8, is the worse. My six iron was pure and turned the corner headed to the green. NO WHERE to be found, the grasses in front of the green was pure water. What a stupid course, and I proceeded to dig up the entire course to landscape it and at least make it better. Hole 14, a pushed five iron hits the track and jumps just a bit off into the ledge. Guess what? 4 pair of eyes and no where to be found. At this moment, it was certainly in a “What in Heavens name are we doing on this profoundly piece of Triceratops CRAP COURSE??!?!?” mode. Obviously, we were on probably drugged earlier to give this a 2. It’s -1 and we are already being charitable.

Again, here we go for the google search index: Bukit Beruntung Golf Course SUCKS.

Beruntung East is not easy. It looks easy from the first tee, but it’s not. It’s like that hamburger woman again, pretending to be pretty. The first tee has a reasonable sized fairway but don’t be deceived, because the trees that hug the fairways: these are bad trees. These are trees you can’t get out of, because once they get to your balls, they crunch them into pieces like the Sarlac eating your balls. Golf Balls, that is.

The second doesn’t get any better. You know you’re in for a long one.

Greens ( 2/5)

As the famed Bart Simpson would say, “Meh..”

Greens are strange as in speed. Each green has a different speed so if you think you’re being clever by taking a long time over a putt and wondering why your last putt zoomed past 6 feet and your current putt is short 10 feet, don’t bother. It’s obvious Beruntung didn’t bother, so just hit the darn putt and hope for the best.

To its credit, like the fairways, we did expect worse, so we’re giving it a 2. The greens are reasonably sized: we just had a nightmarish game in Templers, where the greens were the size of Brazil and I had my first official 5 putt. WHAT!

No comment on greens. Slower than a turtle. On its back. Waving its leg and moving 1 nanometer every year. Bukit Beruntung Golf Course is stupid.

Rough ( -1/5)

One of my playing partners was this close to suicide after a few holes and dealing with his worst experience in a golf rough ever. I mean, it’s not to say that we’re even good in this game, so when the rough catches your balls and not let go….yep, it’s the famous Pitbull Rough. I think Beruntung got lucky with this one. You know they only employ 3 people to maintain all 36 holes of the course, and 2 of these guys are actually constantly swimming in one of the man made mining lakes there, so nobody actually maintains the rough. Mother Nature does that, and it has become so impossible to hit and so deep, we were using hybrids to get out of rough to a green 100 meters away…and still short.

Now, I’m not into S&M, but I’m a little partial for rough that really punishes us without being stupid about it. Punish means, it penalizes us for squirting our ball all over the place like morning piss. Being stupid means not cleaning up the trillion leaves that hide your ball like Seri Selangor.

Granted, Beruntung is on a palm oil estate, so there were not much issues of leaves, except for red ants and the occasional king cobra. Other than that, the rough is tough, so watch for it.

Again, please don’t ask how we could give this stupid course rough a 3. It is spectacularly the most idiotic rough ever. Bukit Beruntung has simply REFUSED to cut any grass or lalang and in most holes, the jungle has reclaimed the course. Yes, we even saw ape men eating pygmies. Hello, Mines, there is a difference between a good rough and an absolutely LAZY maintenance program, don’t think we are so stupid not to know the difference. Tough rough: Saujana. Absolutely ridiculously, astoundingly and emphatically CRAP rough: Bukit Beruntung. If a ball skitters one feet into the rough as is buried under eight tons of lalang, it is not funny anymore. Neither is it golf. Yes, say it again with me: It is STUPID, Bukit Beruntung. Get your sorry act together.

Aesthetics (2/5)

You don’t expect much so you don’t get much. Bukit Beruntung has the similar feel of KRTU, with lots of ugly looking trees sprouting all over the place. It’s not a pretty course, but perhaps we were all playing like drunk mogwais to notice too much of the scenery. We were always destined to suffer on a course that had trees as tight as cycling pants on Queen Latifah. The tough par 5 6^th hole requires a pinpoint drive, and right after that, another tough par 4 awaits us. Basically if you can’t drive straight, you will be in for a long game. And apparently, after 8 years from the time I last played this darn course, something has not changed: I still can’t bloody drive straight. Hole 9 is an intimidating hole that requires a good drive to cross. In fact 9 and 18^th are similar in that sense, and aesthetically, these are the rare nice looking holes of the course.

The toughest holes might be the 11^th and 12^th. The 11^th is a hooker’s nightmare, with jungle lining the left, and the 12^th has water front and right, with a small landing area to hit your drive. The amount of balls deposited into either side of the water can probably be exported to Singapore to help them reclaim land that belongs to the ocean.

The 13^th is the most interesting one, where a good drive sees you about 180m to 190m from the green, which requires to cross a strange looking lake with a natural ‘S’ shaped bridge across it. I recall this hole because when I was much younger, I deposited possibly 12-14 balls into the water. Good times.

Fun Factor ( 0/5)

To say we didn’t have fun at all is not really the truth. Face it, the drive there wasn’t great but they did put us onto the course quickly. And although the course wasn’t so superb, we didn’t pay a whole lot for it. I suppose, we could have had boundless fun if our balls could just find the bloody fairway, because playing from the rough was like having your wisdom tooth extracted with a rusted plier. So there was certainly a case that we were playing so bad, it was not fun. Most of the cours played pretty similar, like I said, except for the last holes of each nine. Each required a good drive, and a good second shot into generous greens. The greens itself weren’t very good on the day we played, and it’s a course, where after the 15^th hole or so, you’ll be wondering, hmmm, what can I eat for lunch?

Downgraded from 2 to 0. Honestly, with such a stupid and idiotic course like Bukit Beruntung, fun factor ranks slightly lower than watching cat shit dry under the sun. And eating it afterwards. Nobody can have fun on such lousy conditions.

And this is not a joke. On the par 4 10th, one of our flight mate hit his second shot onto the slope and immediately this blardy monkey (not the marshal–the actual, animal monkey) came down and picked up the ball, while our poor flightmate was screaming for it to drop it in the name of the law. The monkey actually took the ball and went up to the trees, all the while chattering to its fellow monkey thiefs and bragging how he had found an egg with the name ‘Taylormade’ stamped on it. Boy, monkeys are so idiotic and such a nuisance on the golf course. We were about to start Battle: Bukit Beruntung, against this alien invaders, but after seeing a whole group of them squealing in the trees, we remembered ‘Congo’ the movie and decided to let these beruntung apes hijack the ball.

Conclusion

We came to Bukit Beruntung on the back of its terrible reputation as a Sh*tty course, much like Beringin was. To our surprise, since the Mines management has taken over, it wasn’t so bad.  Let’s just say that there’s definitely a trend to improvement, and perhaps the next time we tee up on it, we’ll be seeing better greens, better fairways.

Please, for the love of humanity and all things beloved on Planet Earth. PLEASE DO NOT GO TO BUKIT BERUNTUNG! Even the despicable Bukit Unggul isn’t as bad. The most profound conclusions we can draw on Bukit Beruntung GCR is, it sucks, it’s daft and it’s excruciating to every senses known to man.

We took the risk to play here on a public holiday, and there was absolutely NOBODY on the east course. We finished in 3 and half hours. It’s like playing in the Land of the Living dead. Now we know why nobody bothers to play in this course….this is by far, the most horrible golf course you will find in Malaysia. You can play it for the distinction.

The good: Subjectively, the rough, depending on whether you like golf S&M; the no-fuss attitude of the club service; the dead weight price is really a turn on, especially for nomadic golfers on Saturday morning that are to cheap to look for better courses (that’s us!!); Mines management can only mean good things.

No. Nothing good about Bukit Beruntung. Horrible course, give the entire Malaysia a bad name for even having a malay word in there. From here on, we are going to christian this course, Crap Course Tak-Untung.

The bad: Trees, trees, trees; fairways as tight as cycling pants on Rosie O’Donnell; greens and fairways are not up to par; and don’t expect too much beauty on the course.

Bukit Takuntung is really really really really lousy. I wish I had stayed home and learn yodeling while in a kilt, or read the entire manual for our home toilet bowl. Both would have been more worthwhile.

The skinny: 7 of 40 divots (17.5%). This is very surprising as we were ready to send Bukit Beruntung into the hell hole of reviews, but came out quite satisfied with the experience. The fact that there is a change of management, and that the Anika Sorenstam Golf City is just next door, means that Beruntung is coming out of the wilderness of golf course and may assert itself as one of the better ones in the near future. Go Beruntung, jangan tak untung!

Too late. Bukit Tak-Untung will go down in the dark distinction of Gilagolf’s hall of shame, joining Selesa and Frasers as the WORST COURSE IN MALAYSIA. This course is so stupid, it’s almost hilarious. Trust me, between this and being gored by a Borneo white rhino, you should choose the latter. This is a MUST-AVOID for everyone playing golf.

And one more time, everybody: Bukit Beruntung: YOU SUCK!

Bukit Beruntung Score Card

Bukit Beruntung GRC Information

Address:Bukit Beruntung Golf & Country Resort
WDT. No. 14 48009 Rawang
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Contact: +603-60281841/1888

Fax: +603-60281843

Email: bbgc@streamyx.com

Website: www.bbgcr.com or www.stupidestgolfcourseintheworld.com

After the longest layoff from my trusted (and inaccurate) irons, I decided to come out of retirement and play a round of 36 with a couple of Gilagolf pen pals from Korea. These guys cold called me on the gilagolf.net website (which brings our foreign readership to an amazing total of three), and we’ve been arranging a time where I can free up my entire day to play two rounds of golf.

I learnt a few things from this: One, Koreans are good. I mean what do you expect from a country that churned out a guy like KJ and a girl like Grace Park? One of them, I nickname, Optimus Prime. Because he was like a robot. He was like the mechanized swing arms we see companies use to test their clubs…every single shot was a precise centre hit. Bam bam bam.

So we played the morning at Impiana…and I must say, the green completely sucked. Since Saujana left, the golf course has lost a bit of its luster. For the price paid, I don’t think it’s worth it.

Anyways, we’re talking about Kajang Hill, so on with it!

Travel (3 /5)

Travel is actually very straightforward. Here’s the official map from their website.

I don’t know why people insist on complicating matters so much. From now on, please, just go to maps.google.com and type in Kajang Hill and you’ll find the directions. There is NO WAY ON EARTH that golfers will ever get lost ever again, unless you are completely blind, or cannot read maps, or illiterate, or you are riding on a blind, deaf and lame donkey to the course…to which our suggestion to you would be to please find a proper job and at least get a bicycle for transportation.

Travel is pretty easy, because of its close proximity to Bangi, and the other clubs around the area.

Price ( 1/5)

Ok, here’s our first beef. Kajang Hill used to be really accessible to cheapo hackers like us. I believe we just paid like RM70 or something and we’ll be happily hacking away at Mother Nature to our own satisfaction. Right now, Kajang Hill charges: RM520 for a flight. That is RM130 per person, on a week day. It includes dinner, which is I think six course, but wait, before you get excited about it, the six course apparently includes the small plate of cut chili in soya sauce. You know, the stuff they give you when you order fried rice to be poured into your rice. That’s right. Kajang Hill considers that a dish. Now thanks to Kajang Hill, a whole generation of Koreans and Japanese will think Malaysia is a land of losers who considers cut chilies in soya sauce a main dish.

So, RM130, and what changed? Golf Course managers out there, the quickest way to make a buck and to charge higher, is to put all signs into Japanese, and change your meters to yardage. All of sudden, you are a premier course.

Sorry, Kajang Hill, you are NOT a premier course, and pricing strategy like this sucks. As a point, I didn’t pay for my game, but all the same, if  I were to have paid for it, I’d think it’s a very pricey for a course of this nature.

First thoughts

Having played this course a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had very little recollection. However, I did have a picture of myself a long time back hitting this shot:

And I always wondered where on earth was this place at. Now I know….Kajang Hill, during a time before the Japanese and Korean signs came up, and it was just another hacker course for us.

Service ( 3/5)

For what they lacked in common sense in pricing, Kajang Hill made up for it with reasonable service. The registration and checkin were painless and quick, and the shower facilities were top notch. The food (aside from the idiocy of putting cut chilies as a dish), was served quickly without any fuss. I think in many parts, while the golf course essentially remained mediocre, Kajang Hill has somewhat successfully glazed over their cutthroat pricing with efficient service, and as the old Japanese saying goes, “Every sin is coverable by cleanliness.”. Actually I made that up, but admit it, you think it sounds pretty cool, right?

Fairways ( 2/5)

OK, course review time! The reason why I am less satisfied with the whole experience was that the fairways didn’t really stand out as exceptionally. The idea of pricing it so high, means that, after all the good service, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the course. The mediocre fairways suffered greatly by allowing buggies on the course, and of course, in the hands of race experts like us, wheel ruts will abound a-plenty. In some areas, bald patches also appeared. It’s not to say it’s bad, but every imperfection is compounded by the fact that it costs us so much to play there….I mean, if I think I paid for a holiday in the Bahamas, will I be contented if they threw me into Pulau Redang for the same price, even if Pulau Redang is a pleasant enough stay?

Greens (3/5)

We played Impian in the morning and had a bad experience with sandy greens. Back to Kajang Hill, the greens were good. While not as pristine as Saujana or other top courses, the roll was predicatable enough for us to sink some impressive bombs, and the speed consistent enough through the holes.

Rough ( 2/5)

Bunkers, rough were reasonably maintained, if not bunkers are slightly packed, so go ahead and get a little more dig into the sand to get the ball out. The rough wasn’t too challenging, while the ball would wander occasionally off the fairways, the rough allowed it to sit up for you to semi-tee the shot. The problem in Kajang Hill wasn’t so much of the rough, but more of the ominous trees surrounding the entire course.

Aesthetics (3/5)

I’m not a huge fan of forest courses. This might obviously be a little subjective, while I am sure some gilagolfers prefer forests and jungles as opposed to broad, generous fairways the same way as some people prefer to undergo unnecessary pain through middle ages torture, I’m just going to go with the majority: We do not like the feeling when our balls disappear into the forest. And if you bring a crock game into the course, like I did, you better get used to that feeling.

We played the back nine first, where I promptly opened with a double bogey in a relatively straightforward hole. The par 5 13th can bring even the most intrepid golfer sporting a crock swing to his knees, as it requires an extremely accurate tee shot, with any wandering balls rolling into the forest on the left, or disappearing into the trees on the right. Plus, you accurate shot must clear the ravine fronting the tee box. Intimidating is probably the second word that comes. The first word is censored, since this is a family-friendly golf blog. After that god forsaken opening shot, you still need to navigate  through a narrow strip of land that twists as if you are running a scope through your colon, and finally opens to a grand view of water and elevated tee, two combinations that do not bode well for hackers.

The painful 15^th was where I really blew up, spinning my first shot into OB and from there, it was just a matter of recovery. With trees lining either side of the fairway, it was a Return to Beruntung, except this was a more expensive lesson to learn. The 18^th shares a parallel fairway with the 9^th, and this is where Kajang Hill picks up points on beauty. It’s a nice ending, actually, and the peanut shaped shared green, with contours is definitely worth the hacking and chopping of several species of fauna into extinction.

Rolling into the front nine, the course opens with a languid par 5 that snakes on a turn to an elevated green, where by some miraculous sheninigans, having topped the ball just past the ladies tee, I proceeded to bogey the hole. The par 4 second is a lot more unforgiving, with bunkers covering the left side that requires a slightly precise hit to the fairway on the right. The first par 3 is an intimidating one, as forests surround an isolated green, where any retarded iron shot that pulls or pushes will be in monitor lizard territory.

The par 5 5^th is interesting as it requires a clearance of a ravine, into an elevated fairway, with no visibility of the green. With so many trees surrounding me, it was as if I have magically been transported into Jumanji.

And of course, coming back to the 9^th hole, I was finally able to place where the picture of me hitting out of the water was taken. Having solved the mystery, now it’s back to solving how to hit the bloody ball with any precision at all.

Fun Factor (3/5)

How fun was this? I think it was a reasonable game, seeing how deep my rut was. I kept hooking the darn ball, and toeing it, and unable to resolve the issue, it was just a complete grind for me. My partners fared a lot better, although towards the end, we were basically resembling the zombies in Resident Evil, having gone through 36 holes for the day. Or perhaps I speak for myself, since my fitness level is probably slightly higher than a 120 year old panda who is half lame and completely blind.

I did have a bit of fun watching my other partners play well, especially the Korean Optimus Prime, because he was just cracking shot after shot after shot. He parred four of the last five holes enroute to an impressive 83. Well done, SJ!

Conclusion

Kajang Hill, as a course is probably in the same standards as Impian or Bangi, with a few wow factor, but generally a functional enough course. The down side is of course the pricing, and simply the lack of amazing aesthetics, except for the ending holes of each nine. It plays very foresty, like Air Keroh, and perhaps that puts it in a disadvantage to hackers who enjoy a little bit of levity from the fairways.

The good: Aesthetically, a typical forest course; very nice ending holes for each nine; travel is reasonable, as well as service; and greens are generally acceptable.

The bad: Pricing is a little bit skewed to the experience of the shower rooms, as opposed to the actual course itself; fairways not up to par due to liberal use of buggies on fairway; rough is not so challenging; sadistic nature of some holes will cause recurring nightmares for hackers with a crock hook like yours truly.

The skinny: 20 of 40 divots (50%). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Kajang Hill is a bad course by any means. If you are willing to pay more than what it’s worth, and work with yards instead of meters, and think yourself as a precision surgeon who can navigate through a colon, and likewise navigate through the forests, then Kajang Hills is for you. Otherwise, it might be a course to give a miss on.

Kajang Hill Scorecard

Kajang Hill Information

Address:

Kajang Hill Golf Club
Lot 1917, Off Km 29, Jalan Semenyih,
43500 Semenyih, Selangor D.E Malaysia.

Contact: +603-8723 7777 / 3801

Fax: +603-8723 7337

Website: http://www.kajanghill.com/02_khgtt_e/02a_khgtt_e.html

Email: info@kajanghill.com

Introduction

We actually played Gardens first before we got to the Valley, so we’ll try to be a bit more objective in this review. In theory, this should have been written before the horrendous valley experience, but I was too lazy to upload the remaining pictures onto the net, so here it is. But you know, when you’ve already had a bad experience, it’s hard to remain unbiased. It’s like accident reports in Malaysia. Reporting an accident in a police station in Malaysia is probably the same experience as pouring acid into your eyeballs. No matter how positive you want to remain, when you come out of the police station , EVERYTIME, you will wonder at the amazing efficiency of our boys in blue…because they never fail to live up to their expectations of crap service. Welcome to Malaysia, the land of super lousy service. I’m just venting, because I just had the most amazing (read: ULTRA SH*T) experience with our traffic police in reporting an accident, which I will vent in another post (I somehow have to tie it down to golf, but I’ll figure it out)

Travel (4 /5)

OK, back to Glenmarie. Travel is pretty much the same as the Valley, so let’s just remain it at 4.

Price ( 1/5)

The first time we played in Glenmarie Garden, I was invited to join a friend who had organized a tournament there for her company. Now, get this: She paid for 12 flights (or something), but only could manage to fill up 11. So she had one extra flight, right? And it was already paid for, right? Management of Glenmarie agreed she can take up that option after the tournament and play with her friends (us) for free!

When we got there, we found out that the green free was free but we still had to pay for the buggy and caddies!

Wait.

Is this flight already paid for already, as part of the tournament? Did we get tournament participants to fork out green fee and caddy fee as well and pay on their own? WHAT THE *&$*??! What is wrong with stupid Glenmarie? It is fast becoming one of Gilagolf’s most hated course, and the painful thing is, the course isn’t half as bad…it’s the stupid management that runs it, along with its cadre of idiotic caddies.

No amount of arguing would do, so we said, what the heck, let’s just pay and play and bitch about this later on a golf blog that has a readership of about 5. That’s how golfers get their revenge…yeah!

I know this might have nothing to do with pricing…we don’t actually know how much Glenmarie actually cost, since their website’s information says ‘update soon’, which means, ‘Sorry, we are so stupid we have no idea how to update our blardy website with relevant information’: but we’re guessing it’s a rate that many people would pay for a neuro surgery, so yeah, let’s keep it a 1 here.

First thoughts

We actually came to Glenmarie with a lot of optimism. I mean why not? This was a course we always wanted to play, it was close by, it had some pretty good reviews overall…and this was before our Valley experience. We really wanted this course to succeed, might even challenge Tropicana/Saujana for the top dog status in our ultimately unreliable Gilagolf ranking. And so, into the Glenmarie experience we went.

Service ( -1/5)

And crashed. I am trying not to include the ridiculous service we got from the Valley experience, but whichever course you play, you get the same clowns servicing you, reminding you over and over again, that GLENMARIE SERVICE SUCKS. It’s on the signboard on the way into the club, go see it yourself.

Aside from our experience at the counter, when they literally stole money from us by double charging our buggy and caddy fee, we were also forced to take caddies. The less I say about the Glenmarie caddies, the better. Next time, bring a block of wood and show the counter lady, “Here’s my caddy.I bet you a trillion bucks this block of wood can give me better advice than these clowns you pass for caddies.”

And here’s the best. I stupidly organized a tournament for some companies in Glenmarie before we had this crap experience. After tournament, I approached the Glenmarie rep to publish our scores on the board.

You know how you know when someone  is discriminating against you? You just know it. I just finished a round of 92 where I spent a good part of my life in the jungle trying to carve escapes routes to the green, so I would not be the cleanest guy around, right? This Glenmarie douchebag just sits there, looks at me up and down and asks me what I want.

“Can you publish our scores on the board?”

“Hah? Apa board?”

“Um, score board. For people to see?”

Laughs derisively, and says something to the 2^nd douchebag next to him, then says in malay to me, “We have electronic scoreboard lah.”

“Um, ok, can you put up our scores.”

“No, you must pay RM200 extra.”

“We just organized a tournament here. Doesn’t it come with it?”

“No.”

“So how the **&# can I announce the winner?”

“Nah, here’s a paper. We tulis lah, then you just announce.”

At this point, I was so hopping mad with this idiot, that I closed my eyes and imagined putting my tee between his teeth and smashing his face with my Hi-Bore Driver.

I don’t know what sort of stupid policy Glenmarie has, but you’re better off negotiating with terrorists than you are with Glenmarie management. Once again, everyone with me this time: Glenmarie management, you suck. You really, really suck. It’s my new song…it’s nice.

Fairways (3 /5)

OK, finally, some golf. Glenmarie, as a golf course, is actually quite nice. The Garden experience is definitely recommended, compared to the Valley, if you’re a hacker like us. If you are into S&M and love torturing yourself to heighten whatever pleasure you are desiring, then hey, you know, that’s you personally, go ahead and play the Valley. For hackers, if somehow you find yourself in Glenmarie, go with the Garden.

The fairways are generous in Gardens, and in good  shape as well.Your first drive is a tricky elevated tee off with water about 190 – 210 from the tee, so you can carefully negotiate it. I quite liked the second, the par five with water on the left, if you cut the dogleg enough, you can actually try to mount the green in two. There are a bit of undulation and elevation but not as extreme as Bukit Jawi, and not as flat as Bukit Kemuning.

Greens ( 3/5)

Greens when we played was in great shape. The roll was there, and Glenmarie greens don’t really break as much as you think. At least that was our experience. And in a lot of the holes, you can roll it on the green, so take your 8 iron or something and instead of hitting a 60 degree 40 meters, just punch and run it on. The fairways and rough are generally not as punishing, which takes us to:

Rough (3 /5)

Mediocre rough experience. It’s not too difficult to land yourself in the rough. On the 9^th hole, I actually putted from the rough onto the green to about 5 feet and sank the bogey. I didn’t spend as much time in the sand as I did in the valley, but it’s punishing enough. There’s a soft top layer of the sand and a hard bottom layer, which means two things:

1)      Your ball will be in a crater if you land in the bunker.

2)      Probably need to get more dig with your SW, or even us a PW with leading edge to get out. I heard this from Golf Digest, but had never really successfully implemented a PW with leading edge in a bunker, simply because I don’t really know what the tarnation does that mean. But it sounds good. And professional. And something that makes this review more legitimate.

Aesthetics ( 2/5)

I’d really like to say Glenmarie is a pretty course, but there’s really nothing special about it. In fact, aesthetic wise, I’d say 60-70% of the courses we have played looks better or about the same. I mean, if we are gonna pay SO MUCH for the darn game, and we have to put up with SO MUCH CRAP from your management and your hopeless caddy, the least you can do is to make your course look a bit more standout. It doesn’t and falls miserably into 2.

Fun Factor (2 /5)

We could have fun, but like in Jawi, the service experience had spoilt it for us. It was just difficult to enjoy a game when you know you just paid money to people who didn’t give a rat-a$$ about you and think they are doing you a huge favor but letting you play on their course. Although I did play pretty ok, with a birdie on the 16^th, we languidly went one hole to the next and just wanted to get it over with. I kept thinking the caddies were in just for the ride since they didn’t do or say much.

Conclusion

The gardens were this close in joining the valley in the dreaded WOTM space. Instead, it does have its own redeeming factor: Glenmarie Garden golf course is ok, playable and at times, I am sure, also enjoyable. If not for the price, it would definitely be right up there with some of the good ones. With the service, it pulls down the rating. People who discriminate against hackers are people we don’t take kindly to, so Glenmarie, either you sack everyone in the customer service management, or lower the price and position yourself as some contractor golf course that you really are. Premium my foot.

The good: Travel is easy; course conditions are generally good; friendly layout on the Gardens course.

The bad:  Again, the customer service of Glenmarie truly, madly, deeply SUCK; price is definitely not worth the admission; caddies really spoil the game, you are better off paying them to NOT come with you because they just add to the useless baggage.

The skinny: 17 of 40 divots (42.5%). Glenmarie has truly been the biggest disappointment so far. They are like France in World Cup 2010; they were seen as contenders but actually turned out to be a piece of crap, mainly due to their service. If you are organizing a tournament there, please, avoid it; if you are playing a casual round and have some money to spend, go KGSAAS instead. Let’s leave Glenmarie to rot, because of the way it threats hackers.

Glenmarie – Gardens Scorecard

Glenmarie – Gardens Information

Address: No. 3 Jalan Usahawan U1/8, 40150 Shah Alam,
Selangor, Malaysia.

Contact: +603-78039090

Fax: +603-78032728

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

Email: info@glenmarie.com.my

ggcc@glenmarie.com.my

Glenmarie. We never thought Gilagolf would ever step into the sacred grounds of the top 3 golf courses around the Subang/Shah Alam territory: KGNS, KGSAAS and Glenmarie. But we were finally able to weasel our way into all of them, and here’s a good look at Glenmarie Golf Club, and two of her fabled 18: The Valley and The Gardens.

We’ll take a look at the more famed one, The Valley.

Travel (4/5)

Travel is a snap. As with all courses around this area, you wouldn’t get lost even if you had 10 shots of JDs and someone pumped you full of valium. The only problem here is the jam. Subang area is notorious for jams. I mean, have you ever tried accessing subang via Federal Highway in peak hours? It’s ridiculous. You can finish watching Avatar and still not reach home. I don’t know how the Subang fellas do it. Having been through a few of it myself, I am already seeking therapy for suicidal tendencies.

Anyways, for Glenmarie, thankfully, you can access via the NKVE. Turnoff at Subang and head straight, keeping right. What you need to do is to make a U-turn right at the bottom of the road and come back up the other side.  Keep left and turn the first turning to the left. Then follow the road signs to lead you to Holiday Inn/Glenmarie Golf. You won’t miss it. Turn right at the traffic light and go all the way in, pass the hotel and you’ll arrive at Glenmarie Golf Club.

Price ( 1/5)

The price is always a giveaway for what is to come. If we pay through our nostrils, the experience better be darn good. If you’re going to charge premium, hey, play premium, and don’t play a course that turns out to be like any other course.

And for Glenmarie – Valley, here’s the cruncher: RM181 for weekday for special discount rate. Because we were organizing a tournament there, my company was given that discount to play a practice round. OK. So what the he** is the discount here? What’s the normal pricing, if already we’re down RM181??

And later on, we’ll explore, is this worth it? For now, let’s just say, I rather spend that RM181 on taking my dog for his rabies injection and buying really expensive Danish Dog Cookies for him.

First thoughts

Glenmarie, you have to give them, has a pretty impressive clubhouse. Everything looks very professional, very well done, well organized. They have their trademark blue roof club house, a huge drive way, and the car park nearby.

Of the two 18s in Glenmarie, the Valley is generally considered the more difficult one, and considered the ‘championship’ material. I don’t know who put that in the brochure, but that’s the generally accepted theme. The course gives what Jawi gave, a general feeling of expanses, which to its credit, Glenmarie exploits very well, in terms of hole design and general aesthetics. It’s not to say we like it, but these are first thoughts anyway. Until….

Service (-1/5)

It’s official. Glenmarie Service SUCKS. You’d think a hotel-resort course would have top class people handling their service, but here it is:

1)      Dumping us into a different course

Having already booked and CONFIRMED an 8 am flight in Gardens, we were unceremoniously dumped into the Valley course by the reception, because there is a monthly tournament going on in the Garden. Ok, thanks. Now why on Jack Sparrow’s beard did you agree that we could use the Garden on that day, and confirmed it the day before??? Why would I want to practice on the Valley when our tournament is in the Gardens? The reception said, yeah, the Garden is easier but Valley is more challenging. My response to him was, yes, and we all look like sadistic idiots bent on abusing our own self esteem by seeking tougher golf challenges. Bring it on!As it is, we can’t even hit the darn ball straight! The point is, we booked Gardens, we play Gardens! And stop trying to convince us otherwise! It’s like we booked a flight to the Bahamas and they send us to the Amazon instead, saying it’s more challenging. The point is, we are packed for Bahamas, not bloody Amazon.

2)      No credit card machine

Ok, only for that day.  They did not accept credit cards, so they insisted on cash. Um, yeah, I carry wads of cash around me all the time, right? Wrong. They claimed the credit card machine was kaput. Do you know how inconvenient it is to get flight members to pitch in and pay in cash? Don’t they know that golfers only carry limited cash with them, so when they lose a bet, they can say, “Aiyo, no money lah”. So I had to pool money from the group, and two of them being customers. Thanks, Glenmarie, for embarrassing me in front of my customers. The least you could do, was to give some more discounts. Because of the broken machine, there was a long wait as well.

3)      Stupid Caddies

We absolutely, vehemently detest caddies that are forced on us (like in Jawi) and doesn’t even know what the green speed is. We got two of the dumbest caddies in the world. One was so grumpy that I was half afraid she would revert back to her cannibal instincts and bite off our ears for losing so many balls. One even had the gall to scold us, when we plopped an extra ball in one of the holes to practice pitching. Nobody was behind us then, so we weren’t holding up. Sure, she might have a point. Sure, it might be illegal. But, um, you are a caddy. Shut the heck up.

If I wanted someone to admonish me, I can get my mom to do it, not some strange looking person dressed in multi colored clown suit, whose primary job is to point out yardage, green details and hang on at the back of our buggies for dear life. One of them refused to take my putter for me when I putted out, instead, insisting the other caddy do it. And they even passed us wrong clubs in several instances, and give wrong breaks on greens. In fact I’m so pissed with them now, I’m reducing service to -1. This is the pinnacle of humiliation, for a so-called top rated golf club to have a -1 service, which is equivalent to the experience of having living cockroaches stuffed into your lunch sandwich.

Glenmarie Golf….your service and your caddies suck. Please improve or stop charging and pretending you are a good golf club.

Because of point 1), I didn’t bring my normal GilaCam, and had to take pictures using my Blackberry. This is because I’ve already taken pictures in the Gardens, and since we were supposed to play in the Gardens to today, I didn’t see the point of it. I didn’t expect the extreme stupidity of Glenmarie to send us to the Amazon when we booked for the Bahamas.

Fairways (2 /5)

So after struggling through the reception, we finally trudged onto the first tee of the valley and…was pleasantly surprise. It was a very inviting tee shot, but I promptly pushed one way right. The first experience with the useless caddy was here, where they didn’t mention there was OB on the right, thinking that we wouldn’t be hitting there. Um, welcome to my world, where balls will fly to where they are not supposed to. I managed to recover for a double, but it set the tone for the day.

The fairways, surprisingly, was not as good as the Gardens. It might be due to the downpour the day before, but there was a general lack of maintenance, as was witnessed by bare or sandy patches, along with tyre marks of probably grass cutters and so on. But the grass was just not compact together, like the ones in Tropicana or Jawi. Glenmarie needs to understand: if you are going to charge an arm and leg for your green fees, your fairways better feel better than my Kingkoil bed. Because if it’s anything short, you are going to get relegated into the dreaded Waste of Time and Money Category. What a douchebag of a course.

Greens ( 3/5)

The greens are slightly better, but again, compared to the Gardens, it’s strangely sandier and less consistent. I don’t know why. I thought The Valley is supposed to be the better course, but it’s turning into some kind of nonsensical journey for Gilagolf, because the course is playing more like Kinrara, pretending to be a Tropicana. Most of the greens was a little sandy, some fast, some slower and there was just a nightmare figuring out the speed. The contours of the greens were also very challenging, which is why we are bumping it up to 3 (we like sadistic greens, for some reason), and large, so a regulation on might actually result in a three-putt, or in one case, a four-putt and a scream of anguish.

Rough ( 3/5)

Take it here from Gilagolf. You will spend most of your waking hour in The Valley in the bunker. There are a total of 1,156 bunkers on the green (this is not verified, we just need an independent auditor to go and count it). The entire course is literally littered with bunkers. I think I’ve hit more than 10 bunkers (fairway and greenside) on my way to an explosive score of 101. This would make an interesting challenge, except the bunkers behave differently. Some are hard packed, some are not so. Some sand is wet, others dry on top, wet under. And so on. And it’s not like we’re even good at getting out of bunkers. We suck at it. And yes, it’s Glenmarie’s fault that we play like drunk gerbils high on methanol.

The normal rough is ok, there’s no penalty like Saujana rough, and in this sense, we are reminded that Glenmarie is a resort course, like Bangi, only 3x more expensive.

Aesthetics (3/5)

Due to the contours of the Valley, you will see a lot of blind holes. One, this means, the caddy comes in play. And with the completely useless twits we had for caddies, we were in for a long day. More than one hole, they were completely lost, and we had to search for the balls on our own…and found them too. So on the tee box, you see…just the fairway and that’s it. It opens up from the fairway to greens along the rolling terrain, so in some instances, like the 18^th, it does gives quite a magnificent snapshot of the course, and why it’s called the Valley. Instead, if you look at it, you might think you were playing in Seremban 3 course, the course we have banished into the darkness of Gilagolf course infamy. Is the Valley pretty? It’s ok. It’s not spectacular, but it does gives some interesting vistas of the course. But everything is with a pricetag. I wouldn’t pay RM30 for a nasi lemak that tastes like a RM5 nasi lemak you know. Same thing. We can go Seremban 3, Bukit Jawi or even KGPA and be treated to similar visuals.

Fun Factor (1 /5)

Thanks to the service we were getting from the grumpy caddies, we didn’t really have a lot of fun at all. And we were a naturally fun group, you know. But one of my guys were seething when he asked for a 3 wood and the caddy gave a 5 wood. He walked halfway and found it to be wrong and had to wait again for the caddy to change. Another instance was when I hit a ball off the green and needed my 60 degree. I had to wait there for close to 5 minutes before she came with the right club for me. And to think we are paying for these clowns.

Also, the Valley is darn difficult. It’s a complete opposite from the Gardens. And I supposed, I’d like to say mentally we weren’t prepared for the Valley at all. While the gardens was generally benign, like Bangi, the Valley played like bloody Seremban 3 or something. The shift in difficulty was something we didn’t do too well with, as can be testified with our escalating scores to the hundreds. We’re not complaining based on that only of course, but hey, a Gilagolf review is very emotional based, and we don’t have a lot of data to back up our nonsensical reviews.

Granted, there was a bit of fun, when a birdie was dropped by one of the guys, but the overall experience wasn’t great, and at the end of the game, we were just waiting to knock off and go for lunch. Always a bad sign for a course.

Conclusion

So is Glenmarie recommended? The Valley is not. And we might piss off some Glenmarie stalwarths here who live and die by the Valley, but by charging us a ‘discounted’ rate of RM181 per person, and having the type of service so unusually poor that I can get better service from the dodgy DVD seller on the street, the tone is set for this course. The golfing experience is mediocre, the aesthetics is so-so, but the overall package is just something we will not recommend unless you are the type that enjoys suffering slowly in the bubonic plague.

The good: The travel is definitely an easy one, if you can survive the jam; the amount of bunkers definitely gives a different challenge; the contoured greens are nice and varied.

The bad: The customer service is atrocious; the caddies are as knowledgeable as the piece of loose gravel in the buggy track; the price doesn’t justify the course experience; the mediocre course just can’t cut it in an area where KGSAAS, Tropicana and Saujana ply their trade.

The skinny: 16 of 40 divots (40%). Congratulations, Glenmarie Valley for becoming the latest, most high profile course to be awarded the WOTM award. You will probably have better service as a POW in a WWII concentration camp. Take your moolahs and use it elsewhere. Glenmarie Valley is to be avoided.