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Glenmarie – Where Idiots Roam

We never seem to have any good experience with Glenmarie. Which doesn’t make sense, because the course is reasonably nice (not great), and the distance is ok for most of us. It’s mainly to do with the service we get there. Maybe it’s just us. Maybe the others have a great time there, maybe its our faces, I don’t know. But everytime we are there, there seems to be always a personal nightmare of experience we have with them.

This time, they bumped us into the Garden because Valley was closed. Garden has a lot more people playing I think because it’s supposed to play easier.And I suppose therein lies the problem.

Hole 1: Par 4, and my driving streak continues. Utterly destroyed the drive and I only had 100m to an uphill green. I opted for a sandwedge but amazingly flew the green to the back. From there, my putt was poor and I couldn’t convert my five footer for par, settled for bogey (+1). It kinda looks like the same crap here – great driver, shitty putter.

Hole 2: Par 3 and I drew my pitching wedge into the bunker. Hit a great bunker out to around 6 – 8 feet. This time, I managed to coax my par putt in. SANDY par! (+1)

Hole 3: Blasted again my driver down the fairway and really, was looking at getting this Par 5 two on with my 5 wood. Instead, I hooked my five wood into the trees on the left. My third was a 60 degree flop shot which miraculously cleared the trees and landed as soft as you like on the green, rolling to around 10 feet of the hole. From there two putt for par. (+1)

Hole 4: Feeling it for sure, I took up a very poor driving position. I aimed far left to draw it back, instead, I sent the drive into orbit and into OB. It went long and straight, no chance of it coming back. Stupid. Second drive, hooked it to the previous fairway, and hit a good 8-iron to put on for four. Two putted double (+3)

Hole 5: Honestly didn’t hit that bad a shot, but my 8 iron hooked and landed on the rough behind the bunker. From there, the dreaded chip wasn’t too bad, but was too far to save par. Bogey (+4)

Hole 6: Like the previous drive, just sent this one right and long with no draw. Luckily this time, it survived, I punched out to 100m and from there, I honestly hit such a chicken shot with a 60 degree as I didn’t want to fly it to the back. Poor. I had to chip from the fringe, but I opted to putt and it wasn’t a very good putt. Left with 20 feet or so, settled for 2 putt bogey. (+5)

Hole 7: Unfortunately, there was where everything started to unravel. The idiots in front of us were taking a hell of their sweet time in their game. There were these four jokers, I don’t know if they were old or not, but they were slow as molasses going through a swamp of their own crap, and chained down on ankles with 1 ton dumbells. THEY WERE IDIOTS! They even had the gall to play twice – one guy missed a putt, and then re-did his putt again. Another time, one of these stooges, took the time to snap a photo. And worse – these jackasses would eat at the halfway hut and then when we reach the green, they would saunter to their stupid tee box. HELLO, STUPID PEOPLE. The front flight is already 3 bloody holes in front of you. WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID AND WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN THIS WORLD, TO BRING DOWN THE AVERAGE INTELLIGENCE OF HUMANKIND? It seems (and I am sure of it) that they are purposely doing this to just stuff a stick up our asses.

So, hole 7, we waited, waited and waited and finally I sent my drive way left with a duck hook – I haven’t seen that in probably 2 – 3 games of golf. It went down hill, no chance, so punched out to 100m and landed my 60 degree way short. It was a poor gamble, and from there, I chipped on but just missed to 4 – 5 footer again. I hate this bloody putter. Double. (+7)

Hole 8: Another hole, another wait, and same drive – hooked to the left. This time, we waited for our second SOOOO LONG that I could have taken a dump and graduated with majors from the nearby university while waiting for these a-holes to complete. Finally, after growing older, I stepped up to hit my second shot from the rough and completely duffed the shit out of it. I wished it was the heads of these 4 Glenmarie Jackasses I duffed instead. From there, 3rd shot flew to the back of the green and putted near and managed to finish with a bogey. Barely. (+8)

Hole 9: WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. Finally, same drive – HOOKED. This time it was left to the left rough and I managed to chunked my pitching wedge to the dreaded position – rough, behind greenside bunker. I executed what resembled a flop, if it was executed by an ape using a radish as his club, hitting a piece of cowshit. It skittered over to the other side of the green, where I putted poorly and just killed myself with another two putts to finally end the 9 hole with a double bogey. (+10)

At this point, I asked if Glenmarie had any marshals and if they were actually doing their job in getting those 4 idiots in front of us to either hurry up or proceed to jump into the lake and do the world a favor by ridding themselves from this planet. The started on the back nine looked at us as if he was smoking weed and muttered, “Sudah, I sudah beritahu” (I already told them), while sitting inside his hut. Wait. You are a starter, where is the idiot marshal? Aren’t they paid to actually work? Apparently not, because there was NO. BLOODY. DIFFERENCE. IN. THEIR. SPEED.

At this point, I engaged into a philosophical and theological discussion with my buggy mate – which started with me stating I should forgive these a-holes and promptly stating afterwards: “No, Forgiveness is between them and God. I just really want to arrange the meeting for them with God.” It’s a line from Creasy, in the all-time classic, Man On Fire. So anyway, buggy mate and I decided to do some religious mind games and stating, “Change what can change, and how we react to things we cannot change.” Ommmmm. And yes, our game changed. For the better.

Hole 10: Five iron with water at 220. I hit it so flush, I nearly ended up in the water. With 140 or so, I opted to play defensive and hit a pitching wedge. I whiffed it a bit and landed short. My chip from deep rough was no where good, and from there, three putted, with a miss of 3 feet for my double bogey. Ouch. (+12)

Hole 11: Par 5, hit one into the right rough (finally hit a good drive at least a straight one). Laid up to 130m and then sent my pitching wedge over the green. And for the first time today, executed just the perfect chip that nearly holed. PAR! (+12)

Hole 12: Pitching wedge uphill par 3. Perfect shot that nestled to the back fringe and two putted from there for second par. (+12). My buggy mate nailed a 60 foot putt traversing through a few mountains. Seems like our theological discourse is working. We are not letting the 4 monkeys in front of us ruin our golf game.

Hole 13: Toughest par 4, which I hit a so-so drive that drew to the left. From there, around 150m, a nine iron was too little and front. I played too defensive here. Chip on wasn’t great and two putted for bogey. (+13)

Hole 14: This drive also had a bit of hook and was in a tough spot on the left. Hit a good nine iron out of the deep rough and landed the back of the green. Executed an ok chip but left me with around 15 feet of putt – which finally I sank. PAR. (+13)

Hole 15:Par 4, a very tough one for hookers like me as it is dogleg right, trouble on left. I started way right but even then, I ended up in the left rough, no view of green. Punched out, 60 degree 3rd shot landed pin high but with too much green to run and two putted for bogey. Not bad. (+14)

Hole 16: Par 5, and I just bombed the drive. I was so far down the fairway, I contemplated hitting 5 wood to put two on. So yes, waited and waited and finally the 4 idiots left, and my 5 wood was promptly pushed into the jungle on the right. Managed to find it and it was deep in the trees. Had to chop out for my third and my fourth shot was just a hopeless one embedded deep in the rough greenside. Somehow, I dug it out and ended up around 8 feet from the hole. Sank it for the craziest, recovery par I’ve made in a long time. (+14)

Hole 17: Downhill par 3, with 150m. Again, I was just too defensive, opting for a pitching wedge that had no hope to reach the green. However, from the greenside fairway, I putted and had around 10 feet to navigate for par – which I did. Recovery par again! (+14)

Hole 18: At this point, my back nine was just an amazing turnaround. After +10 on front nine, I was +4 through 8 holes on back nine. And for the final hole, I completely obliterated the drive and really, had around 140m left to an uphill green. Instead of my nine iron, I opted once more for defensive pitching wedge. Like Hole 17, no chance to reach and again, found myself in deep rough. I thought, ok, easy, I do this for a living.

Duffed. Final chip duffed.

3 on but far from green, I totally mishit my putt and it screwed right and left me around 8 feet still for bogey. Missed. Bollocks.

It sucks to say it, but I ended both nines with just spectacularly poor short games and double bogeys. (+16)

Conclusion: A score of 88 isn’t great because it should have been a hell lot better if my putter could work – or at least, if we played with momentum, i.e not having to wait for idiots in front. We teed off around 8.30 and we got off the course almost 2 pm. 5 and a half hours of our lives lost because of 4 marsupials in front of us who refuses to acknowledge the etiquette of golf and Glenmarie marshal service that is non existent.  I had a good first start, a poor middle and a good finish (except for that double bogey at the end). 5 and half hours – Glenmarie, please, for crying out loud, hire a course marshal who can do his job!!

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Glenmarie GCC – Garden

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)

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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 2nd 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.

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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.

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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:

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Rough (3 /5)

Mediocre rough experience. It’s not too difficult to land yourself in the rough. On the 9th 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.

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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.

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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 16th, 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.

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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.

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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

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Glenmarie GCC – Valley

Introduction

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.

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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.

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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.

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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….

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 18th, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.