Goodbye to you my trusted friend – so goes the first line of one of my all time favourites, “Seasons in the Sun”, that can be applied to almost everything in life, including long lost friends, and your long lost swing.
Perangsang Templer, often the sickly cousin of the more famous and more haunted Templer’s Park Golf Course, is now on her last legs. Like many other golf courses that have fell under the unfortunate progress of man’s astounding greed, it will make way soon for a housing development plan under SP Setia, the greedy bugg*rs that also developed such monstrosity as the Setia Alam, and also guilty of jointly destroying close to 13% of Malaysian’s rainforest in creating their so called Eco-Parks, which the only thing Eco about it is how Economically Gargantuan it had made their coffers out to be. As we all know, housing developers are every golfer’s nemesis. Like the venerable Kajang Hills, now forever just a memory, extinct like the black rhino. Soon, like KGSAAS, also giving way to development. My two clubs, Rahman Putra and KGNS are fighting tooth and nail against these developer sharks who constantly throw money at us to sell our membership and to sell out our clubs. Well – to be totally honest, if they are going to give me something extraordinarily stupid, like 300K for my membership that I bought for 10K, then I would be extraordinarily stupid not to consider it. But I doubt it will come to that point, so until then, everything is no.
Anyways, back to the tragic Perangsang course. It seems like only yesterday (probably 2 years back) that I did a writeup on it for ParGolf Magazine, stating the great potential it had as a golf course. It has never been my favourite, thanks to the sickly narrow back nine hole 12 and 13. But we decided, in the memory of it, as it closes down end of this month November 2014, to play our final game there.
And boy, did it sucked.
There were a few reasons why I shot 99, all of which are poor excuses of a golfer hacking his way around like a mad clown high on cocaine. First, I got this sorry-a$$ putter called the Alien Golf Tutch Mallet II for free from a yard sale and it looked pretty nice so I thought to try it out. Thank you, it is by far the worst putter I have ever yielded and the creator, Pat Simmons, should jump into the lake himself, followed by the entire Alien Brand, which is aptly named, since probably only Aliens would find it easy to use. It was jut weightless. No weight. It looked heavy, but upon research, the head material is made out of a composite of 40% foam used in beanbags and 60% hardened flour. Truly. I was surprised that it looked almost edible.
Additionally, my driver and swing decided, of all times to suddenly give me a nice fade from the tee. I usually set myself up for a right to left draw, so when it faded…hello OB! And finally, I was just a jackass at my chipping as usual. The only consolation I had was I birdied the final hole par 5 of Perangsang in the final game on the course, and that’s a good memory. A good drive and a duffed 3 wood left me around 80 meters from the flag. A 60 degree wedge to about 8 feet from the pin on the fringe and by some stroke of luck using my crap putter that made me miss half a dozen of easy ones, stroked an extremely difficult putt in. Hello, dopamine!
Anyhoos, for those of you who still have time, the course is in a pretty good shape. I think there’s a final tournament there this week, and I would recommend to do a last check on it before it goes down to the graveyard of golf courses. Leaving you, I will post up some golden nuggets from the fat asses who decided to destroy this course:
Report from Star: “State-owned KPS had learnt after a study to evaluate the redevelopment potential of the 18-hole golf course that it was “strategically-located” but “not-fully optimised in its current form and utilisation”.” – Myth. KPS actually did a 15 minute study by surveying the course from their nasi lemak on the terrace and decided, with only 2 old uncles walking the course, that it was not fully optimised and it would be better to sell out and retire rich with undeserved money.
Report from Star: ““The location of the land amidst lush green surroundings and its close proximity to KL and Selangor’s main cities such as Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya make it ideal for an eco-themed, premium development.” – Myth. There is no such thing as an Eco-Themed development. The only type is found in Honduras, where they destroyed houses, built trees and made people live in cubby holes in the trees and eat jackfruits. The stupidest thing I ever head in my life is an Ec0-Themed Development. It’s an oxy moron, which isn’t a moron with lots of pimples – but rather an incongruity of life – like Tiger Woods having just one woman in his bed each night.
“Through the proposed conversion of the land use to a mixed development, the true value of the land can be unlocked, realised and optimised for the benefit of shareholders” – I really hate it when people start using this spin for their own gain. Everyone suddenly looks as if they are Donald Trump, talking about shareholders, ‘true value’ and all the BS. Having been in corporate all my life, I can honestly say, this is complete BS. What is the true value of land? ‘Optimised’ – what the he*l does this even mean? Whoever said this is probably undergoing an optimised surgical removal of his brain to create true value in his BS coming out of his mouth.
“Nonetheless, it said the management was confident that the proposal would be “well-received due to its prime locality” and contribute positively to its earnings and cash flow in the future.” – Ask the golfers, stupid.
“The development, to be located some 20km from the city centre and ringed by lush greenery from nearby tropical rainforests, will adopt an eco-theme similar to Setia Eco Park in Shah Alam, SP Setia said.” – Eco-Park is a graveyard for trees. I counted the trees still living there, and so far, in the barren landscape resembling the Mozambique Desert, I counted around 16 living trees in 13 million square meters of land.
And here is the classic talk from Mah Sing’s Leong Hoy Kum, or Hocum, for the sake of shortening this article and Henry Butcher’s Tan Chee Meng.
“Most of the golf courses in the Klang Valley were planned to be part of a comprehensive development with luxury housing and sometimes, commercial components like resort hotel and office park.” – Not really, Mr Tan. Seriously, no. This is classic BS and spin. I don’t see how RSGC or KGNS would be developed to have a bloody shopping mall in the center of the 18th hole. What a jackfruit.
“But as time goes by when the development matures and the land and house prices increase in the area, it makes better sense financially for the golf course land to be used for higher value developments such as luxury housing,”- That’s just retarded reasoning. Again, value here is truly subjective. To Mr Tan, value = money he puts (and receives) in his pocket. To a cow, value means more grass to eat. Value is the biggest spin crap I have heard in corporate world, which is one of the reasons why I hate it so much. We immediately assume our ‘value’ = everybody else’s value. Ask the black rhino. Oh wait, it is extinct due to it giving its value of his horns to you. I bet that’s amazing value for the whole damned species.
OK, enough of these clowns. Let’s have a moment of silence to mourn for the passing of Perangsang. Happy hacking, people, while we still have golf courses left in Malaysia. By the time my kid grows up, the only golf he will experience is virtual golf in the living room of his “value home” that was probably built on top of Perangsang Templer.