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Glenmarie Roasting

Ah. Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone says: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Out and in here would mean OUT of shitty golf playing.

They here would mean the golfing Gods, or whichever deity is involved in this hopeless drama of pain and suffering called GOLF.

After playing some good golf (relatively speaking) over the weeks, I was pretty confident going into Glenamarie Valley this week. Remember we like Glenmarie. We just don’t like the caddies. I was just recovering from a terrible fever and food poisoning around 48 hours prior, but it’s not an excuse , because I would say, aside from feeling somewhat weak, I thought I was feeling fine overall to play.

We teed up in Hole 10, and today, we were behind complete buffoons who were so slow, they make glaciers look like the Starship Enterprise doing hyperspace.

Hole 10: Straight forward hole and technically should be easy – pulled my drive into the rough on left, a nine iron left me my worst possible shot. The bump and run chip. I proceeded to duff and plop for my third to the front of green. Long lag put and dropped my bogey (+1)

Hole 11: I can score on this damn hole! But I duck hook my drive to around 160m only. An 8-iron left me once more the same stupid bump and run requirement which I proceeded to duff and plop into the bunker. My fourth out of the bunker flew to the back, and two putted for my double bogey. (+3)

Hole 12: So this is the very long par 3 which I usually do not find an issue. But once more, I pulled my 5 iron way left and almost OB the damn thing. I found my ball deep in the rough, tried to muscle it out like Tiger and it plopped 5 feet a way and my third only found the green. Two putted for double. (+5).

Hole 13: Even though I aimed way right on this hole, my ball still insisted on going left and hooked into the rough. I hit a really good 6 iron from the rough. Really, from where I was I thought it was a great shot. When I saw where it landed, it was $hit. It was the bump and run chip/ too long to putt/ not in bunker shot. At this point, I was like an idiot scared $hitless about this shot and I decided to just use a 9-iron and channel the calmness of Phil Mickleson. The result? Duff and plop. So from hole 10-13, every hole I have duffed my damn chip shot, which a chipmunk blindfolded, and being roasted alive over boiling lava would still be able to execute without an issue. 4-on then, two putt for double bogey. (+7)

Hole 14: This should be my favourite par 5. It should be but by now, I was more demoralised than Manchester United in Champions League this year. I pulled my 5 iron into the woods, punched out, hit my 8-iron to 100m and 4-on with a gap wedge. 2 putted for a bogey. Not bad (+8)

Hole 15: So we cross over to the water par 3. PULL AGAIN!!! But this time there was luck. Instead of the water, the ball miraculously landed right at the edge of the fringe and stayed there. Instead of thanking God and taking the break, I duffed my chip again to the fringe and then two putted for a bogey. Stupid stupid Stupid. (+9)

Hole 16: This is by far the worst. I hit a pulled drive. It wasn’t bad. Really it wasn’t. Everyone thought it was fine. It landed just light on the left of the buggy track. Caddy said fine. Went there and nearly dug up the entire course looking for the bloody ball and couldn’t find it. It’s so frustrating. I hit my 4th over the green, 5 on, two putted for TRIPLE. (+12) If I wasn’t fuming on my game, I was truly ready to throw my entire bag into the water.

Hole 17: Apparently the toughest hole on the course. At this point, I changed my grip to be a lot more open because I gave up on my swing. Amazingly, I hit my first good drive of the day. First – straight, but not very long, but straight. It feels strange because it feels I am hitting the ball with an OPEN clubface and I feel that the ball will spin right. But it didn’t. It’s strange! So from the fairway for the first time in my life, I flighted in a 9 iron to the downhill green to about 10 feet and amazingly hit a birdie out of NOWHERE. Even my playing partners were stunned. It was like suddenly a chihuahua bit the balls of a pitpull that was in the process of eating its intestines. (+11)

Hole 18: The Par 5. Tested this strange grip again. Same result, short, ballooned drive, but straight. Second shot 5 wood wasn’t good but still landed on the rough around 110m away. Gap wedge into the green, two putted for a simple par. (+11)

At this point, we were halfway through our second frame sixers game. My first frame partner played like a squid and blew almost all holes, and we lost pretty big (5 balls) in the first frame. Annoyingly once he partnered with another guy, he proceeded to par all 3 of his first 3 partnership holes. I was staring daggers at him already and threatened to puncture his tyres later.

Hole 1: At this point, I thought my game was turning around. Thought. But the guys in front of us were playing so slow, we were growing roots and turning into plants waiting for them to play. They are horrible! So, tee off Hole 1, I reverted to my strong grip because so much water on the right and my new grip felt too open. Immediately pulled nearly into OB. I duffed my recovery into the water, dropped for my 4th and landed that near the green. Putted on for 5th, two putt for 7. (+14) To Make matters worse, that ex-partner of mine, had gone on to par this hole as well, so after playing +10 on the first 6 holes with me, he is actually playing even on the last 4 holes with another partner and racking up the fringes in the game.

Hole 2: Par 5, very easy. Pulled my drive to left, but hit a good 5 iron to around 80 meters. Overshot my 60 degrees to the back, and really, its an awful recovery to end with a bogey from my position. It’s so stupid. (+15). At this point, my ex-partner had duffed his third shot and he was off the green for his fourth and I thought finally, this train wreck can stop. No, he hit a ridiculously stupidly good bump and run that ran all the way into the hole for a birdie. What can you say?

Hole 3: Another relatively easy hole historically, at least. I hit a pulled hook into the woods, but knocked it out and had about 80m to the uphill green. For some strange reason, my 60 degrees came up very short and I had to putt off the green. Couldn’t get near the hole and bogeyed. (+16). The good news is finally, my ex-partner ended his par/birdie run with a double bogey. The stats: +10 with me for first 6 holes, +1 with the next guy on next 6 holes. Huh.

Hole 4: Par 3, easy nine iron to the middle of the green, two putt for par. (+16)

Hole 5: Tough par 5, but hit finally a good drive that stayed slightly on the left of fairway. Six iron was bad and skittered away, left with 130m or so. Gap wedge was slightly short to the fringe and two putted for bogey. (+17)

Hole 6: This is not an easy par 4. Its the one with the power lines to the left. I hit a fairly straight drive, but woefully weak and short. From the fairway, I fluffed my 6 iron into the green bunker and barely got it out with my third. I skulled my chip fourth shot to the other side of the green and two putted for a double (+19)

Hole 7: Ah. The signature L-shape hole. My 5 iron was very short and badly hit. It left me an awkward stance for my second in the rough and predictably I managed to hit a magnificent second shot into the water. Dropped for 4, hit it on the green barely and two putted for double. (+21)

Hole 8: Par 3 and really NOT.FEELING.IT. Still opted for my 5-iron and like an idiot, blundered my shot into the left rough about 40 meters from the green. At this point, I think my mates were starting to feel a little pity for me, like watching a dog die a slow death being rolled over by motorbikes over and over again. My 60 degree was too strong, went over, my shot back was too strong and ended up the front and finally put my 4th on and putted for double. (+23). Sigh.

Hole 9: I am just glad my suffering is over. Glad. I felt like dying. And at this point of “Frankly My Dear I don’t give a damn” moment, I hit finally a great drive. Not a shitty, halfbaked straight drive with the open club face, but the way I always hit my drive. Closed clubface, swinging like a caveman, killing the ball like Jack the Ripper drive. What? I was now 90m from a very elevated green, which I used a sandwedge to get myself up there. 8 feet downhill swaying putt? Yeah, drained the sucker for birdie to finish the round. (+22). In your face, stupid golf game.

Conclusion: I was just dog tired. All shots went left. Legs dead. Strength gone. It was a strange feeling but two birdies? I’ll take it and play again another day.

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Mines Part Two

Its not coincidental that there is a sudden upsurge in article writing in golf lately. The interest is renewed. Thanks to Mr Tiger Woods, because he is back. Suddenly, the whole game becomes interesting again, and I am staying up to watch, and I am thinking I can once more play like him.

This week was Mines Part 2. Mines as you know has always been kind…with par 71, and with good conditions, we are absolutely spoilt beyond words in terms of golfing. We will never set foot again in Seri Selangor after going through these courses.

So, this time, we started in the back 9 and for some reason, Mines today was completely jammed up. Apparently there were some private competition. Also, behind us, apparently was a flight made up of money lenders, which obviously doesn’t bode too well for us.

Hole 10: This is the one I screwed up last round where I pulled into the left water, and then 3 on and one putted for par. This time, I hit the a semi good drive, which actually was a pull but it went nicely to the left, so taking the giant tree in the middle of the fairway out of play. My second shot was supposedly a simple sand wedge. I chunked it. My third chip skittered across the green and I two putted for bogey. So the moral of the story is: bad drives doesn’t mean bad score and good drives doesn’t mean good score. (+1)

Hole 11: The Par 3 where I lost my ball right the last round. Guess what. Deja vu. I shanked my six and once more went into the right jungle! What the H*ll! I chunked my pitch (again), four on and two putted for a triple bogey. Well done. (+4) At this point, we were forced to call on hole because the Ah Longs behind us wanted to play. So instead of facing the barrel of a gun, we took the smart way out and allowed them to play through. The problem was, our entire round then was a stop start wait sequence due to their not-so-fast play.

Hole 12: The par 5 where I hit the tree on the right the last round. Guess what. Deja Vu. I hit exactly the same shot as last round, hit exactly the same tree, but this time, instead of going through, dropped behind the ladies tee and a free jug spent, and became the butt of laughter. What the H*ll x 2!!! This time, I hit my 5-wood to almost exactly the same spot behind the bunker as previous time I played, though further back. I had about 190 to the uphill green, front pin. I opt for my seldom-used 7 wood and just hit the greatest 7 wood ever hit by me. It started right and drew in, flirted with the trees and then landed softly on the fringe, and rolled into the green, pin high around 8 feet away from the hole. Unfortunately I did not convert the birdie but it was once more, lousy drive – par combo on this hole. Who’s laughing now? (+4)

Hole 13: Pulled my drive left and luckily was around 10 feet away from water but awkward lie. A 7 iron got me to around the dreaded 10 meters distance from green. I chunked my chip again!! ARGH. Pounded my fourth on and amazingly one putted from around 10 feet for bogey. Putter is feelin’ it. (+5)

Hole 14: Pulled my drive to the left again (like last round) but instead of punching, I opted to flop a 60 over the trees back to the fairway around 100m. A gap wedge took me around 8 feet of the pin and once more, the putter went to work for a very unlikely par. (+5)

Hole 15:  Pulled my drive to the left again but this time, my luck ran out. This is the easy hole and I lost my ball. Taking an “illegal” OB drop for my fourth shot around the trees, I flopped it on to around 10 feet and once more, one putted for bogey. Amazing putting, horrendous driving. Why don’t ever these two suckers work together?? (+6)

Hole 16: Par 3. Tiger par 3 because of the giant tiger statue looking at us, as in the actual animal, not Tiger Woods. I shorted my nine iron in and hit a very very mediocre putt from the fringe to the back pin and — finally — missed out an easy par putt. Settle for bogey. (+7)

Hole 17: Tun’s hole. Favourite hole. I hit a straight drive (for once!!) but I was aiming right, thinking it would pull, so it landed in the rough between bunkers. Around 130m away from green, I opted for a pitching wedge instead of a 9-iron which I should have used. I landed 5 meters short of green and from there, an off the green putt left me too much work for my par and I bogeyed my favourite hole. Damn! (+8)

Hole 18: The Top Glove hole. Because there is the Top Glove building that I always aim for and hope it draws back to the fairway. It was a great straight hit but again, because I compensated for a draw/hook, it plopped into an impossible lie in the rough which I could just punch out. From there, I hit a poor approach short of the green. Putted into the green and two putted for a double. (+10)

At this point, the theme was clear: My drives were pulling and I was compensating. But the last two hole I compensated, I hit straight drives. What the fishcakes is happening?!

Hole 1: So to the front 9. Semi pulled my drive but not so bad since I compensated right. I was left with around 110 to the uphill green but I flew my gap wedge to the right fringe. I finally hit a good lag putt to tap in for a par. (+10)

Hole 2: The L-shape Par 5. Signature, at least to me. A good drive, but second shot I short sighted myself. I played an 8-iron thinking it would get me to 100 meters from the green. Instead it was poorly short and I was around the 150 meter marker instead. I pulled my 9-iron and it was going wet on the left, when suddenly, it ricochet off the face of a rock at the side of the lake and went up and landed softly on the fringe around 10 feet away from the pin!! If that wasn’t luck I don’t know what is. I two putted for the most unlikely par in my decorated history of unlikely and undeserved pars. (+10)

Hole 3: Index hole, long par 4. I pulled my tee shot in the huge left fairway bunker but managed to hit a good 7-wood from there to around 20 meters. This is the kryptonite distance and yes, once more I chunked my pitch to a few feet, and managed to regain some pride with a chip to around 15 feet. Putted in for a bogey. Putter is fine. Drives are not so and chips are completely retarded. (+11)

Hole 4: Finally, the course gives and takes away. Remembering the Hole 2 nonsense, Mines decide to swallow up my ball on the left after another PULLED drive (my seventh overall). I couldn’t find the ball, took an illegal OB drop, chunked my fourth shot, five on and two putted for triple bogey. CRAP. What more, an easy hole relatively which I birdied in my last round! (+14)

Hole 5: Hit a reasonable eight iron to the fringe but almost in the exact copy as the previous round, I putted off the green too quickly and skittered to around 6 feet past which I failed to sink, settled for a bogey. It’s like I am on a replay here. (+15)

Hole 6: The driving par 4. For once I hit a dead straight drive and landed to around 20 meters from the front of the green. I hit a dreadful pitch but at least it crept into the front of the green but far away from the back pin. Lag putted and hit the resulting 4 footer for a par. (+15)

Hole 7: The par 3 over water. This time, playing at the black tee, I flighted my 5-iron, pulled it somewhat but luckily hit the slope on the left and bounced onto the fringe to around 15 feet of the hole. Luck! Two putted for par. (+15)

Hole 8: The long par 5. I’ve  learnt a lot of lesson here from the last round. I pulled my drive just like the last round to the left rough. Hm. OK. I used my six iron just like the last round and hit the exact same pull that skittered over the ground. But this time I got lucky, instead of hanging up on the rough, it rolled to around 120 m from the green on the fairway. At this point, we each told each other: “Don’t go right” because there is a valley in there and a steep hill to the green. I hit EXACTLY the same chunk as I hit last round here. Exactly. And it landed at the same spot. Last round I managed to hit a super 60 degree to 5 feet and putted for par. So, I had every reason to be optimistic here since this is like Groundhog Day. CHUNK. It went into the hillside to the right. Where we told each other not to go. The best thing? ALL OF US ended up there. We are like a bunch to stupid lemmings playing golf. I managed to chip well (I think because I didn’t care anymore) and it landed inches from the hole and I settled for a bogey. (+16)

Hole 9: PULLED MY DRIVE AGAIN. I was like Goddammit, just bin this damn driver. In the rough under the tree, no hope for regulation on, so I hit a low 5-iron and then a 60 degree wedge to the fringe. Two putted for bogey to end the day. (+17).

It was a game that was strange. I felt my putting was once more amazing, but I really gave up more than half a dozen strokes on my lousy drives and chunky chips. Its a mental thing, I think, my chipping. Ah well. Now, I guess back to watching Tiger for the Bay Hill tournament. Go Tiger!

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Glenmarie Valley Course

Glenmarie always had a bit of dysfunction in terms of the quality of its course vs the quality of its services. The course – especially the Valley – is a joy to play in. The service like caddy and marshals are as bad as extracting your wisdom tooth with a rusted plier. And as expected, today’s game, our caddy was once more hopeless. On the 2nd hole already, he wanted to start smoking, until one elderly gentleman from our flight scolded him properly.  I don’t know why they are so idiotic like that. Can you imagine me doing training formally with my client in his office and then start smoking while in the training? Glenmarie, please spend more in getting proper people to run your course!

The marshal is also another joker. She came to us on the sixth tee claiming we are slow. I looked back and saw nobody on the green on the previous hole. How are we slow? We played the next hole and even on the tee of the hole after next, we saw nobody on the tee on the previous hole. She kept asking, are you a member, is anyone a member, you are slow. I said OK, sure we will hurry up but I don’t see anyone behind me.

But Valley course, while not as joyful as mines, usually serves a good score for me, but today, the greens were quick. And mostly on quick greens I suffer. My driving wasn’t as bad as in Mines, but my putting was awful. It’s very strange that the driver and putter never want to go to work together.

Hole 1
Tough par 4 and I started the day by pushing my drive into the water. Its common that in the  first few holes I always struggle, and from there on, I couldn’t recover and ended up 5 on and 2  putted for a triple bogey. (+3).

Hole 2
This is a broad par 5 and friendly. A good drive and a duffed 5 wood saw me around 130 meters  away which I duly put on but unfortunately 3 putted on a quick green, missing an easy 3 footer.  (+4).  3 putt.

Hole 3
This is a very nice hole where a good drive can find you less than a hundred to the hole. Which  was what happened to me. I flighted in with a gap wedge around 100 and two putted for par. (+4)

Hole 4
An uphill par 3 around 140 meters, where if you challenge the front bunker you will be duly  rewarded. I took a pitching and stuffed to about 5 feet and sank in the birdie! (+3)

Hole 5
And right after the birdie, it went downhill quickly. This hole was tough because it was narrow  and does not favor the guy who hooks. I hooked my drive, punched out and with around 160 to the  hole, I mistook the distance and my 9 iron was left with a difficult 20 m flop over the bunker  which I stubbed to around a few feet away. My 5th was too hard and it rolled over the green down  the other side, and my 6th was barely on. Two putted for a nice triple, yay. (+6)

Hole 6
This was where the marshal came after us and told us we were slow. We never saw anyone behind us  and we were all fast players, so what the hell was she babbling about? This was a reasonably  tough par 4. I found the bunker on the right even with a good drive, and from there hit a  pathetic shot out to around 60 meters. I flopped my 60 degree to around 5 feet but this time,  missed the par putt (+7)

Hole 7
A very nice dogleg right that needs to go over the water on the second. A five iron left me
around 150. I almost hit the perfect 9 iron but started too far left and couldn’t draw the ball back in. My ball plopped into the green bunker, one out, and two putter for (+8)

Hole 8
Long par 3 which my five iron found the side. It was not a great lie, with a lot of rough between  ball and green but because my chipping was so retarded, I opted to putt. It barely crawled on the  green and I two putted for bogey. (+9).

Hole 9
The final hole this nine is the signature par 4. However I hooked my drive and from around 140 at  the bottom of the hill, I duffed my nine, chipped poorly on but managed to two putt for a bogey.  (+10)

Hole 10
As great as my putter was last round, it was kaput this round. A great drive to start, but
shortchanged my approach when my pitching was short. Again, I opted to putt but was once more  very poor and only had to 2 put for a bogey (+11)

Hole 11
Great par 4 here, but my drive found the trees on left. A punch out found my next shot at my  dreaded distance, the 30 meters chip/flop. I obliged my idiocy by skulling my chip over the green  into the water (!). I hit a reasonable flop for five on and two putted for triple bogey (+14) my  third of the game.

Hole 12
This was a par 3 which I finally hit a perfect 5 iron into around 180 meters to the fringe.
However, I managed to sabotage all my efforts by three putting from around 20 feet for a bogey!  (+15)

Hole 13
Tough hole but I managed to hit a very good drive that left me around 140 to the green. Instead  of a nine, I thought I could muscle a pitching in there. Like Hole 10, shortchanged myself, and  once more on the side of the green. Opting to putt, it was not a good one (again) and I had to  two putt for a bogey. (+16)

Hole 14
The signature par 5. Everyone’s favourite. I clobbered my 5 iron and then positioned myself with  an 8 to around 100 meters. A simple gap wedge gave me a 10 feet or so putt. I am a putting idiot  today as I blew the first putt past and missed my 3 feet comeback. AGH! (+17)

Hole 15
The par 3 was playing from black tees and basically I just couldn’t shape my five iron into the  green due to the wide expanse of water on my left. Instead, from greenside bunker, I slapped one  out to the fringe and two putted for bogey (+18)

Hole 16
A reasonable drive which gave me around 130 meters to an uphill green. I used a gap wedge in  (much to the confusion of my caddy because he kept looking at my gap wedge in disbelief – to be honest, its probably the distance marker that is a little screwed up), and stuck it safely on the green, two putted for a par that  was a long time in making. (+18)

Hole 17
Hate this hole. It favors the fader, but I set myself to aim so far right I drove the ball into
the trees and was spitted out to around 50 meters away. A poor 5 iron duffed left me around 140  meters to a downhill green protected by bunkers and water. I hit an OK topped pitching wedge that miraculously rolled to around 5  feet, and guess what? I three putted when I charged for the first putt and left with a tasteless  double bogey (+20)

Hole 18
Finally a par 5. The drive once more wasn’t a good one but caught a break when it sat up ont the  left rough. I hit perhaps the best 5 wood I ever hit to around 30 meters of the green, although that’s no man’s land for me. That meant my 5 wood went around 220 meters or so if the markers can be believed. I hit a bad chip, but at least I was on for regulation. A two putt routine par to  end the day. (+20)

So there it was: I 3 putted around 7 holes, inclusive of the ones I tried to putt outside the green and it just shows the how low confidence my game is on chips. If I can sort those chips out, I could probably play at an easy 14 handicap or lower.

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Mines Golf Resort

Mines had always been a positive hunting ground for me. Sometimes it’s like that – horses for courses sort of thing. We have a guy in our group who struggles in almost every game we play because he doesn’t drive very long, and we end up giving him previously up to 3 strokes per six (that means in a game of sixers where we switch partners every six holes). So for every 3 lowest index holes of that six holes, he gets a stroke from us. Yes, this also means its possible that a par 3 is a ‘chocolate’ hole as well. We moved down to 2 strokes when we started noticing that he would play exceptionally well in Tropicana. Not one time, but almost all the time, he would be scoring pars and playing in the low 90s, which generally pressures us to play in the 80s which naturally we struggle to cope with such a pressure. But in the other courses, he still plays like an ostrich dancing in a tutu.

Same here. Some course just suits the eye. There are some courses that you just hate. Just hate. It’s like an eyesore each time you look at it because it looks like you are about to play inside the carcass of whale that has been dead for 80 days and maggots are rotting inside its flesh. Seri Selangor fits that description. Some other courses that I have reviewed here in this blog that get bad reviews. Basically courses that I cannot break 100 because my driving is so crap.

But ah Mines Golf Resort. It’s really a course worth waking up to.

If I were to tell you that you would score one of your best scores , but you would lose 5 balls either in the hazard or OB, you wouldn’t really think that’s possible. But it happened. And it’s mind boggling.

Hole 1:- Great drive, pulled my pitching wedge into the bunker. 3rd shot still in bunker. Fourth shot out and drained the 8 footer for bogey (+1)

Hole 2:-Hooked the drive but luckily it skittered into the rough. Placed my six iron around 130m or so and used a gap wedge to end up in the front fringe – two putt for par. (+1)

Hole 3:- Horrible hole. Hooked my damn drive again into the water on the left. 5 wood to about 20 meters, duffed my chip. Skulled my fifth across the green. Chipped my sixth to around 5 feet and putted for triple. (+4). First lost ball.

Hole 4: HOOKED my drive again into the palm trees but got a lucky break and hit my 9 iron through opening and onto the green to around 12 – 15 feet, drained birdie putt (+3)

Hole 5:  Par 3 across water, hit a poor 8 to the small landing area on the right of the green, and then putted across the fairway and green to around 5 feet and sank the putt for par. (+3)

Hole 6: Drivable par 4 but again hit a bad drive to left of the green. I once more skulled my chip and it skittered over the green into the water. I dropped for my third, missed putt for par by inches. Second Lost Ball (+4)

Hole 7: Six iron into the fringe, routine two putt finally for par. (+4)

Hole 8: Not a great drive, again its a left pull. Pulled my second shot again but at least I had a gap wedge in the rough to the green for my third – which I duffed and nearly tomahawked the club. But with my 60 degree into an extremely difficult green, it landed around 5 feet for a downhill putt which I miraculously sank for par (+4).

Hole 9: Horrible drive, this time, flared right. Found it and once more an opening with an eight. I hit a reasonably good shot but it caught the tree in front of me and it dropped. Or at least everyone thought it did because we saw it fall, but didn’t see it hit the ground. We spent 10 minutes combing the entire place, all 6 pair of eyes (4 golfers + 2 caddies) but nadda. We suspect it fell onto the branch of the big tree and got stuck in the tree. So I had to drop for my 5th (illegal OB drop at the tree). Hit my fifth near the green, two putted for 7. (+7) Third lost ball.

At this point, I was having an absolutely nightmare driving. Except for the first hole, all my drives were either pulling, hooking or pushing and it was like wrangling an anaconda.

Second nine and the same story prevailed.

Hole 10: Hooked the hell out of my ball into the water on the left. Dropped for 3 and stuffed my gap wedge to about 1 feet of the hole for an improbable par. Fourth Lost ball. (+7)

Hole 11: Par 3. Pushed my six iron into  the jungle. Bye Bye.Dropped, put 3 on and two putted for double bogey. (+9) Fifth Lost Ball. 

Hole 12: Pushed my drive and hit a freaking tree around 50 meters from the tee box but luckily skittered past the ladies tee. Shortest drive of all, only around 80 meters. 5 wood near the fairway bunkers, I had around 190 m left which I used my 5 iron and ended up around a few meters from the fringe. I putted to around 10 feet and drained the par putt. Another miracle par. (+9)

Hole 13: Finally – since my first hole, a good drive. So good in fact, I was using a pitching wedge into this index 2 hole and was around 10 feet away from a birdie putt which I missed by an inch or so. (+9)

Hole 14: Hooked the crap out of my drive again into the trees. Couldn’t get out with my punch, and a poor 3rd ended up around 10 meters from green. Skulled my chip to the back, chipped to around 10 feet and again, sank in the double. (+11)

At this point, the trend is that my drive was exceptionally crap, but my putting was exceptionally brilliant.

Hole 15: Drivable Par 4, but bottomed by drive. Thankfully I still hard about 110 meters in which I hit my 60 degree too short and it trickled into a deep valley at greenside. I putted from the bottom of this valley to around 4 feet and sank the par. It was like God himself has given me this putter today.  (+11)

Hole 16: Simple par 3, but short again and this time my putter  didn’t rescue and my putt from the rough came short, and two putt for bogey (+12). When asked why didn’t I chip, I told the caddy has he seen my chips the entire day? I would have putted even if I was knee deep in bloody quicksand. (+12)

Hole 17: We call it Tun’s. Because Tun Mahathir’s house overlooks the green. And traditionally for some reason, my favourite despite it’s formidable index 4. It just suits the eye, and I’ve been scoring well each time I play this. A good drive gave me around a nine iron into an elevated green. I actually didn’t hit a good shot but it got lucky and curled and bounced onto the green and trickled down to around 15 feet of the hole. I just about missed my birdie and settled for a par. This is quickly becoming my favourite golf hole of all time. (+12)

Hole 18: This one was weird. I hit what I thought a great drive, which shaped around the bend but the caddy said it might be OB. True enough, I curled it so much it landed into the area of the fairway where I had no sight of the green. I was blocked by trees. I took my 9 iron and just hit the living crap out of the ball and it curled round the trees and landed on the green for a two putt par (+12). When asked how I managed to curl the ball like that by my caddy, I told him, that was my natural shot. Each shot that I am hitting straight is a battle against the habit to hook/draw the damn ball. So if I need to hook around the trees, that shot is pretty easy for me. It’s hitting straight shots that suck!

So there you go:- 5 lost balls, a shocking driving day, lucky bounces, ball eating tree, magical putting and a score of 83 (Mines is Par 71). Ah, golf.

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Tropicana – great course, horrendous caddies

Tropicana has always been a favourite haunt of ours. The advantages of the proximity to all our homes, the great fairways there, good greens and overall mixture of challenging holes and holes we can attack – and over 27 holes, it has become our preferred destination of weekday golfing.

Which brings the problem – it is also the preferred destination of a thousand other golfers. Even playing on a weekday, especially with one 9 closed, can feel like a weekend pace for some. Especially today, when we had an absolutely hopeless flight in front of us. You know those type that takes 2 minutes to putt a 3 footer, misses, kicks out a leg and screams a chinese expletive. It is very, very tiring just sitting down (yes, we finally gave up and all of us just sat on the fairway watching them do their nonsense) and seeing how frightfully inconsiderate they are.

While Tropicana is one of the best course in Malaysia (in our opinion), it is balanced out with the most crappy caddies in all of Malaysia. They are useless and the ones we experienced were idiots. I generally don’t like to comment too much on caddies, but today, there was one hopeless lady caddying for us (the other buggy, not mine). She had comments for everything. The clubs we used, the distance, what we should be doing and all that. Once in a while it’s fine but when I am at the 17th hole, and you are the caddy of the other buggy you DO NOT tell me to hit a 8 iron into a 140m stick. She just stood there and said, “For you, boss, use 8 iron”. I am like, who the hell are you? You don’t caddy for me so shut the hell up.

The final hole, where it was a 240m to the pond, while everyone was using 3 wood, I was contemplating between my 5 wood and a half controlled driver. Because I was feeling good with my driver. She immediately said, “Cannot! Tak boleh!” and I told her, the more I hear cannot, tak boleh, the more I say, BOLEH. And it was the last hole anyway and I just wanted to swing it. She kept grumbling for some reason. She is NOT my caddy. She caddies for the other buggy. My caddy was generally mute, which is the preferred condition I want my caddy to be in.

I hit a great shot, but it drew and it looked like it entered into the water near the green. The “not my caddy” laughed and said, “Padan Muka (serves you right)!” a few times.

I walked over to her and said in my broken Malay interspersed with English colourful words, “You do not comment on me. Once, twice is enough. If the golfer decides to use a club, the golfer decides. You do not make any further comment, or laugh or make fun of the golfer. You are not my friend. You are a god*amn caddy, and that’s what you do, so shut the **** up and caddy your sh*t or else I am going to leave you here or throw you into the ******* water. You are not my friend, so do not talk to me like you know me or you know sh*t about me. You don’t get any tips and I am going to put your card into the sh*tty caddy category later. Now get the **** away from me.” I said it in a very calm manner, but made sure she understood. She has no familiarity with me, and I have zero inclination to be familiar with her, so unless she wants her mouth stuffed full of golf balls, just do what your limited job scope is or get out of my sight.

I found my ball at the edge of the water, used my 60 degree and stiffed it to around 5 feet, missed the birdie and par my last hole. She avoided me after that.

This is not the first time, Tropicana caddies have given us shit. The problem with these caddies is that they think they are our friend. There was another caddy my friend scolded the other day (on the 1st tee, nonetheless), for showing up late, and not doing what she was told, and scowling and making a meal out of taking the club for my friend. He just told her to get away from our flight and basically kicked her out. The starter intervened before my friend went berserk on her.

It’s not like we want treat Caddies like crap. I get it. It’s not easy caddying for hackers like us. But when we have told you to shut the hell up once or twice, then just shut the hell up. Again, the concept here is you are NOT my friend, so don’t talk to us like how we talk to each other. They aren’t educated to caddy properly, and I fault Tropicana for that. If you give us hopeless caddies, then at least just let them carry our clubs and that’s it. Nothing else. Tropicana = great course, EXTREMELY USELESS caddies.

My game was amazingly up and down today. When the dust settled, it was 5 double bogeys, 4 triple bogeys, 1 bogey and 8 pars.

I almost went bogey free today except for the 17th hole when I hit my first bogey with a bad 4 footer miss.

And it’s not like I was driving it bad. All my triple came from great drives.I usually set up to aim right as I have my draw as my normal shot and hook as misses. For some reason, on all my triple bogeys, I hit great straight drives – either they went into the water or OB, or in one occasion, I simply could not find it. So driving wise, except for one hole where I topped it, it was a PERFECT driving game for me.

The other parts of the game was another story. My chipping was like a baboon trying to hump a kangaroo while parachuting down, with a dynamite attached to the ass. That’s how bad it was. There is something wrong mentally. I am mentally incapable to chip. I do it perfect on the practice range, but in the game, as if for some reason, I suddenly become a tapir learning how to tap dance. I don’t think it can be cured, like my color blindness, so I just have to live with this confounding handicap. This has turned many of my par or bogey opportunities to double and triple today.

But yeah – slowly, I am getting back up to speed for 2018. It’s at least a lot better than my first game for sure.

Oh by the way, at the end, we did tip the hopeless caddy and we also put her card into the ‘good’ category. For all our talk, we are actually very compassionate people and look – you are far away from your home, you probably have kids back home you are homesick for, and you probably made an honest mistake in being familiar with us when we don’t want you to – let’s move on, be careful next time. That’s why I like this group I play with, we are NATO people – No Action , Talk Only. Always threatening the caddies, but at the end we are too charitable to be angry for long!

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Sungai Long, Luckiest Day and Bad Caddies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We were like, WTF?

As in W.T.F.??!

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

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

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Glenmarie’s Thieving Caddy

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It’s been a while since my last post!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sungai Long Golf and Country Club

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Introduction

There are two golf courses in peninsular Malaysia designed by Jack Nicklaus – Sungai Long and Legends in Johor. In the East, there is Borneo Golf and Country – but as it is, Gilagolf has never hacked in the east before, so I’ll just stick to West Malaysia golf courses in discussion.

Now, Legends was great. It’s a very nice course and we all had fun on it – the only problem there was that the buggy cost us RM174. And the fact that the people there didn’t tell us that promotion was going on and we could get a lot cheaper than what we paid for with a voucher – like RM2 cheaper. But it was the principle that mattered – and because of that Legends was given a 1 in service and a 1 in pricing and 0 in travel. The people running Legends were twits. But the course itself was really really good and highly recommended.

So what now for Sungai Long? As the first Jack Nicklaus course in Malaysia, where does it stand in the Gilameter?

Why did it take so long to play this, pun intended?  For one, for some time, it was considered a ‘private’ course, that means only by invitation and with a member or again, you will be shot on sight for trespassing. I suppose recently they have seen the fallacy of this concept, because they have opened it up to RHB card members like us. So let the hacking begin!

Travel (4/5)

I honestly think this portion of the review does not have any sense anymore. Now you need to understand this blog was started in 2007, when google maps were not really that great and the Waze founder was still in his mother’s womb. So, generally GPS was not publically available and we used this section to draw crude maps and give crude directions to the course – of course, now with the advent of GPS anywhere and everywhere, only a chimp with Alzheimer will get lost trying to locate a golf course anywhere on earth. This was apparently taken for granted because strangely two of our guys got lost. One guy – excusable, he was on his superbike, so it’s not like he can whip out his phone to check GPS (although I would imagine it’s mountable) – the other guy was a 40 plus fler whom when we ask, don’t you have waze?, looked at us with a general puzzlement you would expect from an Alzheimeric chimp, locked in a cave for 20 years and with a bare recognition that the item he is holding in his hand is more than a phone and not simply a Nokia 5110.

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To be fair, he got lost at the Fork of Bamboozlement. The Fork of Bamboozlement (or FOB) for short is this fork in the road when you are taking the Cheras highway to Kajang. It is existing there to simply cause distress and pain to non Cheras residents. Now Cheras is this great place to find food to eat, but it is also home to roughly 3.6 million people, or roughly 15% of the population in Malaysia. It is known as little Shanghai due to the sheer volume of humans gathered in one place.

Of course, the historical accuracy of what I just wrote is a little suspect, since I came up with that history primarily just by watching the cars stuck in traffic jam on the other side of the road going into KL. I swear, Cheras people are probably the most patient people in the entire world.

Anyway, back to the FOB. Once you go past Connaught, you will need to follow the road signs to Kajang/Semenyih. Go under the overpass as shown below:

After the overpass stay far right as you go up the hill as below:

When you come to the FOB, don’t panic, like my friend, who immediately swerve left and found himself inside Cheras and lost for another half hour navigating the traffic to get out. Escaping Cheras is like escaping from Alcatraz or Hotel California. You can check in but you can’t ever leave. Stay far right on the FOB and you will be ok, you should end up on the right highway leading to Impiana/Sungai Long.

From there, follow Waze based on traffic. It will either tell you to turn off at Sungai Long or earlier, depending.

Once you are in Sungai Long, the course is almost next to the entrance. Just turn right after entering the main arc or Sungai Long and you should see the course on the left. Easy peasy.

Price ( 2/5)

The price is this:

RM220 for green fee+RM71 miscellenous all in (caddy, insurance, buggy – assuming buggy fee is split). After the astronomical charges for buggies at Legends, we were really glad the buggy here is RM76. But still, you are paying a weekday rate of almost RM300.

Honestly, we wouldn’t be playing these courses (palm garden, Mines, Sungai Long) without our Infinite Cards, which waives the green fees for us. And once the green fee was waived, and we negotiated not to have a caddy, we paid a grand total of RM56 with a food voucher of RM10 per pax, so effectively it was RM46. The food voucher is forced upon you whether you like it or not.

Now, of course, I am assuming not everyone has the infinite cards, so going by the normal pricing, it’s still way too expensive for a course like this (as later you will find out). However, I am willing to concede a slightly higher score because of the thought they had in allowing us to not have a caddy, but then they offset that with a forced food voucher on you. But hey, RM56 for a Jack Nicklaus designed course? Nobody is complaining!

First thoughts

Standing at the verandah overlooking the course, I honestly can say the first impression was a little underwhelming. We were expecting the course, being private and designed by Jack Nicklaus to be some sort of wonderment to us – with fairy dust twinkling in the sunrise and an amazing spectacle of a course in her full array of beauty before us.

What we got was a rather flat looking course, with a LOT of workers.

I mean, the amount of Bangladeshi workers here was amazing. Even when you drive into the bag drop area, you will see around 8 – 10 bangladeshi lounging around just talking. I think they are caddies, but I am not sure. However, it’s slightly intimidating because you think you just went through a wormhole and came out on the other side of Dhaka instead of KL. Suggestion to Sungai Long – please build a nice area for your caddies to chill, and not have them congregate at the bag drop area.

On the course itself, while flat, we were willing to give the benefit of doubt that it would be a supreme course, and hopefully can get to the Died and Gone to Heaven status that NO COURSE has even come close to achieving. This is definitely a DAGTH candidate and we had such high hopes for Sungai Long.

Service (2/5)

The service and ameneties were not grand. To be honest, the changing room looks a little run-down. The lockers were oldish lockers that were half the lenght of normal lockers, so when you hang your shirt in there, it sort of crumples because there’s no space. No aircondition, which I suppose they purposely built it that way to harness the energy of nature. Compared to Mines, Sungai Long changing room was like comparing Scarlett Johansson to a rear end of a llama.

Anyway, just as we were going off to the course, the caddy master came and ask – would we like a FREE caddy who is a training caddy, accompanied by a normal grade caddy?

FREE??! Hell, yeah, as Malaysians, that four letter F word is our favourite word.

So we took up this young man, and he had an older mentor on the other buggy and off we went.

Note to all Gilagolfers: DO NOT TAKE UP THE TRAINEE CADDY. I know he’s free, but soon you will find that he had it a bargain to NOT pay US for caddying for us. And we ended up giving tips!

The trainee caddy, BY LIGHT YEARS, was the worst caddy we have ever encountered in our collective lives, and if we had past lives and future lives, it would also be in those past lives and future lives. On the first hole, when asked whether we were using yards or meters, he just looked at us blankly.

At first I thought he didn’t hear, but when repeated, I tried using Malay and English and elicited no response, but a blank stare. Great. He was dumb. As in not stupid dumb, but non-speaking dumb. I tried using sign language but then he uttered something non decipherable. Great! He speaks but does no speak our language. That’s a bummer.

So I told him, ok, just make sure you handle our clubs and pass clubs to us when we need it.

Through out the game, we had such a stressed out time teaching him about caddying:

  1. When we were all searching for balls, he would be sitting in the buggy staring into space and day dreaming of his life back in his hometown
  2. When we were on the green, we would be texting on his phone (this is the first time I’ve seen a caddy more busy in business than us)
  3. When our balls are on the green, he would be standing to the side, not bothering to clean our golf balls for us
  4. He constantly brought us the wrong clubs
  5. He could never find a ball – he would just wander around, following you looking at the exact place you are looking and when you ask him to scamper off, he would grin and just continued following you. I hate to demean a fellow human like this, but honestly, my pet terrier who is now dead, took better instructions that he did.

On the 9th hole, my friend flipped. His ball went right and missing and we all went to search including the other caddy. This trainee caddy took the buggy and drove all the way to the green while we were literally all searching for the first drive.

He confronted the caddy and said (in not so nice terms), that if he wasn’t interested in caddying or even learning, he could leave and go back to wherever he came from for the back 9 because he was an utter useless piece of crap.

He improved a little after that, but was still atrocious. He would step on our putting line, forget to remove the flag etc. There was once, I was lining up to hit a provision shot, he literally walked in front of me to search for my lost ball. I had to go Christian Bale on him. Then, when I was still pondering what irons to use, he would GRAB my irons to take it from me before I was done. I was shocked. It was as if he wanted to steal it but he was just trying to be initiated and clean my clubs, but still it was unnerving to be leaning on a club and then suddenly got it yanked away under you.

He also would clamp my clubs under his armpit as he carried them. And not at the shaft but at the GRIP. He would put my grips under his armpit and then once he removed them, there would be a line of sweat on my putter grip which just made me go, “ You know what, just give me the damn clubs and go back to the damn buggy.”

This guy is a legend. If you guys go over there, don’t fall for this free caddy nonsense – unless they are paying you. However, we generally talk a good game, but we are actually very compassionate inside. We ended up tipping him RM40 anyway because we didn’t have change, and because it was Ramadhan and we finally felt sorry for him.

I mean, if I were in a foreign land without my family or girlfriend (whom I am constantly texting while these chinamen putt on the green), and I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink and kept getting barked at by these chinamen in a language I didn’t understand – I would feel suicidal. Being a little generous despite sh*tty service was something we all could do to make things better for this guy.

Fairways (2/5)

Darn, that was a long detour from golf!

Anyway back to playing the course.

The fairways were disappointing. Really. For a course with a price range and expectation like Sungai Long, we expected at least Mines/Palm Garden sort of variety. Instead, we got something a little better than Seri Selangor/Bangi but no where close to the top tiered quality.

At first, I thought these were divots that other groups were playing that day. Until I realize we were the only ones on the course. The multiple sandy patches we experienced through the course were probably because that area of the fairway was bald or grass wasn’t growing. Nowhere close to our expectation at all.

Greens (3/5)

The greens were functional. It wasn’t as slow as the Mines and generally had a good roll, but it wasn’t amazing. It was well kept but something that you would expect in a course with this sort of prestige.

They also had a few shared greens, which makes them slightly interesting when you are faced with a putt that is like 60 feet long or something. The breaks are there, but not subtle like Saujana and generally, there wasn’t too much to complain or be in awe of. Functional being the key word.

Rough (3/5)

The rough was tough. Like Mines, any misses from the fairway and you are punishable by a broken wrist. It was devilish difficult to carve any sort of shot from the rough, let it be an iron, or hybrid or wood or anything. You could just pick the ball and throw it and you would probably get more distance. But that’s what a rough should be. So there are no complaints on it.

The bunkers (and there are a huge number of these suckers) were another challenge, and they littered the entire course. While you would think Sungai Long (Long River in English) would have water as its primary hazard, the bunkers were the ones that will befuddle you a little, making hitting the fairway a definite must in this course (unlike the friendly Palm Garden).

Aesthetics (2/5)

If you are looking for an awesome looking course – Sungai Long is not for you. Which is strange. Because Legends was an amazing looking course. Sungai Long looked like its ugly step brother. Then again, you’ll need to give credit to Jack by sticking to the name ‘Sungai Long’ (pronounced Soong-ai Long, not Sun-Guy Long, for our foreign readers). He could have named the course something like Everglade River Course or something but decided to stick with the not so glamorous name of the township. I think he learnt his lesson because Legends (which was designed later) wasn’t named Kampung Kulai Golf Course or something.

But the looks of Sungai Long was simply not amazing. The first tee was a flat looking par 4, and it doesn’t really improve after that. Again, this seems to be a limitation of a course built within a township – like what I wrote about Perak Golf Club etc, because the terrain there is limited, and basically we will need to depend on the designer to make it interesting.

Did Jack do a good job? Honestly I have no idea. We just played the course as we would play any other course and really had no appreciation that it was designed by Jack. It seemed to play normal except for some inordinately long par 4s and bizarrely difficult par 3s. Otherwise, it was normal – not too bad, not exceptionally great. I have a feeling this is a course that requires a few runs at it to have a better appreciation.

Fun Factor (3/5)

As long as we were playing in our normal group, we would probably still have fun playing a bombed out course in Afghanistan. The course itself offered its unique challenge. The first hole gave us hope, because it was fairly easy. The next hole is very long par 5 which would be amazing if you hit in 2. Hole 3,4 and 5 are the 3 headed hydras that completely monkeyed my game. I scored double/triple/double for an index 5-1-3 combo. The long par 3 at index 5 is one of the tough ones, but could be made easier if you bailed out to the fairway on the left. Since we were all neantherdal men who had not evolved too much in our brains, we declared to go for the tough pin position on the right and challenged the water. Obviously I failed miserably with my shot whirling into a wet grave. The index par 4 is actually navigatable. But because at 400 meters you think you need to whip an amazing drive, I ended up slicing it into water on the right (which technically should never come in play). OB left was more normal. The next par 5, at around 515m was a very long and tiring par 5, which I struggled to a double bogey again.

Strangely, Sungai Long is measured at around 6000 meters. That’s actually considered short based on many standards. I was for the first time carrying a slice which was very strange as my shot shape is usually a draw. So imagine the craziness in lining up right to left and your shot goes left to right, or simply a huge push right. I missed most of my fairways but still managed to recover a fair bit.

Another strange thing we had was the interpretation of ‘flower bed’. We get free drops on it, but when asked, the caddies had no idea about how flower bed was defined. So we generally took a liberal view of a flower bed – if it was a bunch of bushes that had flowers in it, it was a flower bed. Not that we hit a lot (I only hit into one flower bed once), but probably with a better caddy, we could understand the course a lot more. It’s actually a poor excuse, but it’s not like this review is going to make it to GolfDigest so who cares.

Hole 9 is a very pretty hole that I put my second near the green using my wood – I hit a terrific drive and still had 170 plus to go and maneuvering a river running across the fairway.

Hole 15 is actually a nice par 5 and like 9, with a river running through the fairway around 300 yards. I flared mine right again but still managed to get back on the fairway and messed up my sand wedge into the bunker. Stupid.

The fairways are slightly tight, so you need to hit them to score better. It’s really not a difficult course I think. Except for the 3 holes that are tough, the rest plays pretty straightforward, which begs the question on why we still cannot score.

The last 3 holes were played in blinding rain. There are no sirens or warnings apparently so we basically just make our own decisions on our lives. We decided to play in the rain and risk being struck by lighting, and our scores basically reflected that. We did take a temporary shelter when it got really, really bad – as in Hurricane Katrina bad — whereby our caddy decided to have a long chat with the course workers, adding to the suspicion that his previous vocation was probably plucking out flower beds on the same course before being promoted to a non-speaking, non-working caddy.

Conclusion

So how did Sungai Long fare?

Well, it’s functional, but unfortunately functional is not good enough for the price they are charging. The fairway has been taking a fair bit of hit, although the rough and greens are reasonably good. The course itself – and here’s where we give a mulligan – I believe we will need 2 or 3 more rounds here before we decide on whether the design is good. Just because it’s the course that Jack built doesn’t give it a free pass for hackers. Otherwise, the rumour on Sungai Long is that it will go down the road of Perangsang and Kajang Hill: the membership is being bought over by a property developer who will be tearing the golf course down in favour of an eco-development that will benefit the entire world and cure World Hunger. All property developers will generally market their products like that. And you can trust property developers as far as you can throw a cement truck. Of course, these rumours are unsubstantiated, but looking at how golf courses in Kajang area are being destroyed, I won’t be too surprised if this rumour turns out true. So I suppose we will put in a few more rounds in there.

The good: Travel is generally favourable and not too deep in the housing area if you can navigate the FOB properly; greens and rough are challenging, if not just slightly average; it’s a quiet course so you typically can blaze through your round pretty good and there’s always great food to eat around there or just down the road at Balakong area; it’s Jack Nicklaus designed.

The bad: Pricing is still too high, even if Jack had a hand in it; the free caddy is horrendous, and the regular caddy wasn’t that great either; the fairways are very underwhelming with a lot of sandy patches and probably a few grades lower than Tropicana or Palm Garden; aesthetically quite average and no real shout out loud holes to remember.

The skinny: 21 of 40 divots (52.5%).  Like all the over priced courses in Malaysia – IOI Palm, Mines etc, if you are going to fork out RM300 per pax for a weekday, its recommended to give it a miss unless you purposely want to set yourself up for a disappointing 4 hours. However, if you have some discounts or a free green fee like us, it’s a no-brainer and it’s a go. As for the caddy,  the only way I would recommend the free version is that you want to test your patience – for instance if you are going to have a child soon and you just want to see how it’s like; or you adopted a puppy and you want to train yourself to control your anger. Or, if you are feeling particularly evil, just go for the free caddy for comedic value. Send him to the other buggy and you will have barrels of laughter over their misfortune.

Sungai Long Golf and Country Club Scorecard

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Palm Garden Golf Club

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Introduction

This is Palm Garden Redux.

A few years back, there was a brilliant course around Kajang area called Palm Garden Golf Resort. We gave it a must-play rating, because the pricing was around RM100 for walk-in weekdays, as it was accessible and it was a great conditioned course.

Unfortunately, golf owners being generally filled with greed, they decided to tear down the entire place and rebuild the course, giving it a slightly different name but marking up the price to some stratospheric pricing that it was no longer sustainable for sane golfers anymore.

So how then did we end up here?

Recently a bunch of Gilagolfers got the RHB Infinite Card and with it came all the goodness that golfers deserve – free green fees at Kota Permai, Mines among others, and then Palm Garden Golf Club. With that, Gilagolf had upgraded from hacking courses like Seri Selangor, KGPA and the God-forsaken Bukit Ungguls to playing excellent, overpriced and usually overrated golf courses that in normal circumstance would have a hunter shoot us down with a bullpup sniper rifle. But with the card, we have gone from eating maggi goreng mamak food to caviar at a Michelin Star restaurant. The downside was summarised in a question posed in our group:

“How to go back to play crap courses like that??”

Travel (3/5)

Travel is more or less the same as previously except now the former clubhouse is a dilapidated hovel that is primarily used as a preferred premise for B-Grade local horror movies. What I did was to use the famous Golfer Silk Road (North South Highway) and turn off at Kajang. After the toll, take the turning heading towards Cyberjaya and Putrajaya. Once you are on that highway you just look for the IOI City Mall Putrajaya.

This section of the review should no longer be even considered, now with the ubiquity of Google Maps and WAZE. If any of you are still using the Nokia 5110, well, probably a good direction is found here on their website. It’s pretty poor even by Malaysian Standards, but here it is.

Price (1/5)

The reason why we never ever stepped foot into Palm Garden since it was modified was simple. The rumour was that management had decided to charge a ridiculous rate for hackers, primarily to discourage grave diggers like us and to encourage the more genteel foreigners from Japan, Singapore, US, Korea and any other country that has a stronger currency than Malaysia – which means EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY ON EARTH RIGHT NOW, except for one of the Polynesian island called Kikitawaku, whose citizens use coconuts as the primary form of exchange. Thank you, 1MDB and our Ministry of Finance for caring so much for Malaysia and congratulations for turning the ringgit into something comparable to my son’s diaper after his daily shitting session.

Anyway, here is the rate for new Palm Garden (weekdays – since I assume for weekends, you are probably one of the said foreigners or a Malaysian who is planning to sneak into the course at the risk of being gunned down by a marshal with a bullpup sniper rifle.)

RM280 for Green Fee

RM110 for Buggy

RM80 for Caddy.

Which means for a single human – RM280+RM55+RM40=RM375+GST=RM397.50. Plus roughly RM25 for caddy tips per person = RM420.

That is RM420.

I checked back old Palm Garden and the rate was RM100 ALL-IN. Means buggy, caddy, green fee (of course, not tips).

In all honesty, the good news was that the rumour of Palm Garden charging RM400 green fee for a weekday was of course, false. The bad news was that, Palm Garden New is still no way worth RM400 ALL-IN for a weekday rate. Let’s compare:

KGNS – RM150 weekday greenfee + RM50 caddy + RM42 buggy =RM242. This means all in, KGNS is still cheaper than the GREEN FEE of bloody Palm Garden.

Now if its a really super, crazy Pebble Beach like golf course, then sure. In comparison, green fee at Bethpage Black in New York, home of PGA Majors is around RM280 Green Fee for twillight tee off. Yup. Palm Garden = Bethpage Black. Come on, Palm. From here on, I refer you as Face Palm Garden for stupid rates and pricing. Your course is nice, but it’s no way worth that much. It’s about maybe RM150 – RM180 green fee weekday, to stretch it if you want.

I know – Management looks at us and compare us to beings that is slightly between a centipede and an iguana and generally do not give a crap sh*t about what we think, but Face Palm Garden Golf Course – you are definitely getting a 1 on pricing from us!!

First thoughts

OK – now that we’ve gotten the price rant out of the way, let’s go back doing what we do best. Play bad golf.

The first hole we teed up was a slight dogleg right, blind tee off. It wasn’t a pretty hole, but once we got to the fairway (after one of my few tremedous drive), the thought was – nice. The fairway was like a carpet. It was very good.

Of course, if you were to pay so much, it shouldn’t be so surprising, and after playing Mines for a few weeks, we weren’t so terribly impressed either. I mean, it was good but shouldn’t we have expected that?

The greens as well, I must admit was way better than Mines. Well maintained, and excellent challenges as well.

Service (2/5)

Unfortunately, the caddies we received were extremely poor. At least the one we had was. She seemed very new, very inexperienced, and left us to our own retarded way of reading the greens. I expected her to at least help here and there, but she was slow off the cart to look for balls, and generally did not really find the balls, and we had to all plow in to help each other. A good caddy, now I admit, makes a ridiculous difference. The one I had in my previous 82 at Mines, was like a Caddy God. I think the other caddies probably has his picture on the wall and worship him. His reading was perfect. You think there was a break and he just stands there and says, No boss. Hit straight, trust me, because I am the Caddy God. And he was right.

Palm Garden Caddy was very much like the Tasik Puteri kind of caddies. Slightly slow, no response, no input to the game, does enough but not too much. The bad thing about her was that she almost lost my partner’s pitching wedge. She left it on the green and we all had to wait for her a few holes in front while she retrieved it. Lucky the course was empty!

So, no, sorry, caddies are just poor.

Fairways (5/5)

After such a bad start, the rubber hits the road when we play golf.

And at last, Palm Garden shines. At last.

The fairways were excellent. I would say, similar to Tropicana kind. It’s the type where the ball was simply sitting up, and inviting you to hit your perfect shot (which unfortunately hardly happened).

The undulation of the fairways was also a great challenge as well. Because they allowed buggies into the fairways (surprisingly), the caddy at the back was subjected to extreme conditions as we raced up and down the dunes of Palm Garden like crazy Fast and Furious drivers. This also meant that the ball was either above, below feet, or slanting or sloping, making it a far more challenging experience – though very rewarding once you get it right.

Greens (4/5)

Greens were great. It was much faster than Mines played, and the rolls were excellent.

The breaks for these greens were really really – subtle. It’s almost like Saujana where you think it doesn’t break so much and suddenly it veers 90 degrees and you are like, WTF? Caddy, why the hell didn’t you tell me!!??

Which is why caddies are so important. They need to read for you and none of us got a correct read. None. We were basically just guessing all the way and putting like a bunch of monkeys high on weed. Really. It got to a point of such retardedness that for 3 greens in regulation I hit, I three putted.

These are greens where you go, I will be back to play you again, Suckers.

Rough (3/5)

Rough – not much challenge here. I hit the bunker a few times and it was generally well maintained, and the rough was rewarding as well – you hit it there and it still sits up nicely. Not like Mines, where you are dead meat and you would need a cleaver to get your ball out.

Aesthetics (4/5)

Rolling hills, elevated tee boxes and expansive scenery – these would pretty much sum up Palm Garden Redux. It’s a course where you are definitely glad you took half a day or a full day leave for, or played hookey from work. It’s somewhat similar to the previous Palm Garden, but now, there is less maturity in the course and a lot more ‘expansiveness’ (not expensiveness, though that is also a case). Meaning in some tees, like the last one, you get to view the entire course from the teebox. The 11th Tee Par 4 also has an excellent view.

I guess the only downside of it is the construction buildings happening all around. Like the first hole. I am like, what the heck is this, Bukit Jalil??

However, I am somewhat partial to elevation in a golf course. It gives the course a lot more life, and here are some photos to just capture the essence of Palm Garden a bit.

Fun Factor (5/5)

Palm Garden never lost it.

Sure, they overpriced it, but playing on this course is just fun.

I actually played a lot better than my score suggested. The first hole, I was a Sand Wedge away from the green for my second, and I pullled the devil out of it. I went through a crisis over 3 holes with double, triple and double but mainly because I started shanking the crap out of my irons. I don’t know, I have been shanking a lot lately, so I am not sure how to resolve it. For instance, the best drive I hit was a soaring draw on the 8th, leaving me with a 60 degree pitch to the green. I shanked it way right into the bunker, my third shank of the day. Even my partner shook his head in disbelief and said, WHAT.A.BLOODY.WASTE. Yes. I know.

The backnine steadied somewhat, but was full of missed opportunities. Again, a lot of it was due to bad second shots and a dodgy drive. The best hole was the 16th, which long drivers can really gun for. It’s around 300 meters on paper, but it’s a sloping downhill that if you can catch it perfect, it can hit a slope and run all the way down to the green. No kidding. I hit mine low and with a draw and found myself at the dreaded 30 meter pitch with my 60 degree which I shanked a few times. Luckily I managed to pull it off and hit a perfect pitch to around 5 feet and sank in the birdie.

Again, it was fun. Like Mines, we avoided the excruciating wait for other flights as the entire course was literally empty. We had a great group and great wager going, and after the game had such a ridiculously good lunch at the famouse Dengkil restaurant, we were just drunk with happiness. My next game in Palm, I will take the whole day off instead of half-day.

Conclusion

OK – in conclusion, Palm Garden still retained it’s beauty, charm and fun as previously, if not, even becoming slightly better. The course condition is overall excellent and the fairways are fantastic, but the great letdown of stupid pricing and some poor caddies are really a concern. If you are going to charge premier pricing, you need to be a premier course. The fact is, Palm, you are not. You are just a wanabe, which is what Awana is trying to do (I hear). Please, price yourself slightly lower and don’t be too greedy and money grabbing to local Malaysians who are trying to do our country proud by playing good golf so we can represent Malaysia in Olympics.

The good: Great greens and fairways; the aesthetics are just charming; challenging holes and fun backnine with 3 par 5s and 3 par 3s (like Bangi), and food around the area (Dengkil) is through the roof. Get your favourite flight here and I dare you not to enjoy your game.

The bad: Pricing. My goodness. It’s not worth that much, please. And caddies really really need to improve.

The skinny: 27 of 40 divots (67.5%). Comparing it to the old Palm Garden, it went down a full 10%. It’s still entrenched in the Must Play category of golf courses, alongside KGNS, but it’s now rated lower. The pricing is just irreconciliable. If they remove that obstacle, the course will become more accessible. Then again, for guys like us, we might enjoy it less if shared with 100 other golfers as opposed to just 2 – 3 flights as we did that day.

New Palm Garden Score Card

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Hacker Guide To Breaking 90

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It seems easy for some golfers, but somehow after hacking this game for what seemed like an eternity (it has only been 11 years), I am still struggling to break 90 regularly. Of all the games I’ve played this year, I finally managed to get that done on the (admittedly) easy going course called Bangi, by scoring 86. Here’s a hackers guide to get it done.

1) Go for everything

This might sound counter-intuitive as Butch Harmon and Leadbetter and all these losers will say, “You gotta manage the course, don’t go for it if you think you can’t.” That’s horse$hit. As Master Yoda would say, “Do or do not. There is no try.”. Every Par 5 in this game I went for 2. On the front 9 3rd, I whacked a 3 wood to the green and the toughest green on earth to putt. 3 putting for par was the best I could do. Admittedly, Hole 8 was almost impossible to go for 2. Hole 13, went for 2 and ended up greenside and just bladed my chip too far for birdie. Hole 17, also went for 2 and ended up greenside again but again, chipping was retarded. The point is, forget about course management – GO FOR IT!

2) Drive like a machine

Due to retarded short game inherent in all hackers, our only hope of survival, we need to drive like a king. Which was precisely what happened. I was blasting the ball like a machine, and only had one bad drive the whole round, the par 4 six, where my drive skittered right, ricochet off the 150m marker and into the bunker.

3) Luck, luck, luck

Again, par 4 six hole, if my drive did not ricochet off the 150 marker, it would have ended up dead in the woods and survivability would have gone from 20% to – 50%. Sometimes, luck is all you need to keep the round going.

4) Go for 1 on if you have a chance

Related to point 1), this is a more extreme case. In Bangi, there are plenty of holes where you can actually blast one on if you are feeling it. Hole 10, I launched it around 20 meters from the green, so near that I had to apologise to the group in front, who just said, “Good shot!”. However, after they saw me chunk my chip and blade my third to a bogey, they just shook their heads and left. Ahhh – the delusions hackers have. Hole 16 is another drivable par 4. I missed mine right, but a friend of mine was left with only 30 meters to the green. Hole 18 is definitely drivable, it’s an elevated teebox and if you had the balls to challenge the bunkers you can go for one on. I was around again, 20 meters from the green.

Hole 1, challenge the trees on the right and you can also one on. And if you are great, even hole 9, you can put it to around 40 meters to the green, which was precisely what my partner did.

But the one hole you MUST go for one on in Bangi is Hole 4 in Putrajaya Nine. This is an elevated tee off to around 270 meters to the green but challenging a large pond fronting the green. Usually people will play safe and play to the fairway to the left, but it didn’t make sense since the drop zone is only around 80 meters from the green. I did go for it and the ball stayed in the air for an eternity before splashing down around 1 meter short of the green. In fact, it hit the stone wall fronting the green and bounded back.

5) Momentum counts

We had a partnership going on, and we played the back nine first. We were 4 – 1 down in the first five holes and the other team was just gloating around us. The sixth hole, I stuck my second on the green around 10 feet but tricky downhill. The other guy, putted around 25 feet from the fringe and dunked in his birdie. They were so confident of winning his partner did not putt out and they were saying 5 – 1 down is too big a hole to dig from. My partner was going for par. I putted, and ridiculously went in for a birdie to tie the first ball and we won the second ball. From there, we went on a tear, from 4 – 1 down, to win 4 straight and won 5 – 4 on front nine, and carried over to the back nine and won 11 – 7 overall, outscoring them 10 – 3 after that unlikely birdie. Play for something, and get the momentum.

In all likelihood, if you are a hacker, you have a retarded short game, like me, so don’t bother about it. Avoid bunkers like the plague. I only hit one bunker (the lucky shot) and the rest was either fairway or rough. We just don’t have the capability of hitting chips, bunkershots or flops that other low handicapers can do. But if you drive like a demi-god, it will cover your flaws. This is the only route to breaking 90, if you continue to suck at short game and putting – like me.

Obviously, the lower handicapers will shake their heads and say, we need to improve the short game, but where do we have time or the discipline to do so? If we had short game, we won’t be hackers!!

Frankly, it’s a lot more satisfying blasting the ball to smithereens and watch it dissolve into the horizon and sunset, isn’t it?