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Bukit Beruntung GCR – East Course

Review has been updated due to Bukit Beruntung’s astounding crapness on 2 May 2011. New review in RED. So those in black (dated August 27 2010) are NO LONGER APPLICABLE!

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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Travel ( 3/5)

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

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

Price ( 2/5)

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

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

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First thoughts

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

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

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

Bukit Beruntung Golf Course SUCKS.

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Service ( 0/5)

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

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

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

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

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

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Fairways ( -1/5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Greens ( 2/5)

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

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

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

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

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Rough ( -1/5)

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

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

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

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

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Aesthetics (2/5)

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

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

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

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Fun Factor ( 0/5)

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

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

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

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Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bukit Beruntung Score Card

Bukit Beruntung GRC Information

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

Contact: +603-60281841/1888

Fax: +603-60281843

Email: bbgc@streamyx.com

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


AUGUST 2ND, 2010

Kulim GCR

Introduction

Kedah is one of the northernmost part of Malaysia, almost to the Thai border, and home to a few golf courses that we always wanted to play but couldn’t find the time to do it. So some gilagolfers found themselves up north and had a choice to play Cinta Sayang or Kulim. I don’t know who the heck made the decision, but at the end, we all found ourselves headed to Kulim because it was closer to Penang, where we were staying.

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Travel ( 3/5)

To reiterate, this category of travel is fast becoming irrelevant. With the advent of google maps, you can get almost anywhere these days without depending on sh*tty maps that the golf courses provide. Seriously, here’s the map provided by Kulim.

Kulimmap1

What? This is as bad as Staffield’s map. I mean seriously, how many monkeys does it take to draw something like this? On the website, here are the actual directions:

“it is easily accessible via the 4-lane dual carriage Butterworth-Kulim Expressway which forms a part of the East-West Highway. This highway links Kulim Hi-Tech Park directly with the North-South Highway at the Seberang Jaya Intechange, Penang International Airport, the North Butterworth Container Terminal and the Penang Port.”

Umm. OK. Which part of directions to golf course is the writer missing here? He’s talking about the highway, for sakes! It just shows how tepid Malaysian golf course website writers, very much like our police force. Providing heaps of useless information, but never the relevant ones. OK, gilagolf directions:

Kulimmap2

kulimdir

There, simple. If you still can’t get it, I’ll assume you need it in Braille format. I don’t think you should be driving anyway.

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Price (3 /5)

We also selected Kulim because it was ridiculously cheap. With the weekday and with the top premier vouchers, we paid only RM30 per person, with buggy. RM30! That’s like dinner for me and my wife daily! Of course before you get too carried away, there’s probably a reason why this course is so cheap; aside from the fact that it’s pretty deep in. We’ll explore it later, but at RM30, it could be as bad as cowdung and we might still be able to forgive it.

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First thoughts

Kulim, at the first tee kinda reminded me of UPM, which makes sense. It looks like a jungle course, without any of the open spaces we had experienced in Bukit Jawi a  day earlier. Like UPM, with my cranky drive, my best bet would be to keep it in the fairway and keep it safe. Unfortunately, rain was pelting down as soon as we teed off, and we knew we were all going to be in for a long day.

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Service (2 /5)

Not much experience with the service, except the lady at the counter took an exceptionally long time to register us. There was about 3 flights over all, to be fair to her, and after that debacle at Bukit Jawi (where halfway through our case, the woman declared she had to eat lunch and left), Kulim was at least good enough to get us onto our buggies and into the course before we started to grow a beard each…including the ladies.

And….NO CADDY!! YEAAY! I like courses without caddies to bother you and think of how much to tip them.

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Fairways (3 /5)

With the downpour, fairways were soggy. To be fair to Kulim, it fared a little better than say, KRTU when it rained. At least we had minimum embedded balls, and more importantly, no casual water. In fact, the drainage was very good.

Don’t expect too many broad fairways in Kulim. It plays a little tight, especially the north course, so it might be wise to hone up your three-wood off the tee.

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Greens ( 1/5)

While the fairways survived the pelting rain, the greens did not fare very well. Due to poor maintenance, the greens were inconsistent. Some were sanded, some had grass as long as the fairway, and some both. I guess maintenance is pretty expensive, and judging by the amount of traffic we saw there, I don’t think there were too many people playing this course. Then again, I bet at 5, those managers from the surrounding factories in Kulim Hi-tech park will pour out into the course and hack it up.

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Rough (1 /5)

You can always tell by the bunkers and boy the bunkers are really not so great in Kulim. Aside from the rocks threatening to scratch and split your clubs, it was just hard packed dirt. In fact, there was once I actually putted out of the bunker onto the green! True it was raining, but there was also overgrown grass at the side, so hitting a couple into it, it was a hard search for the balls.

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Aesthetics (2 /5)

Surprisingly, Kulim actually looks nice. We caught it on a gloomy day for sure, so I’m thinking if there was sun, and we had some shadows, it would definitely be worth a shot. Elevation helps. Like Jawi, some drops were pretty extreme.

The first tee will require a precise cut into the middle, before it opens up to the green. I smashed my first shot so far right, I think I killed a kelapa sawit worker. The par 3 3rd in the North course is a hooker’s nightmare, with water on the left, but reminded me very much of the second hole in Bangi. Perhaps the most picturesque hole on the course is the par 3 7th on the North course. It’s an intrepid 185 meters from the elevated tee to the semi island green. It’s definitely not something we want to try with the rain pelting down.  But amazingly, everyone got on the green from my flight. Behind our flight, the 4 guys all crashed and burned in the water.

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From there, the course sorts of meander on with pretty much the same scenary, till we reach the 18th hole on the east course, again a textbook par 4 reminiscent of the par 4 hole in Bangi where we try to smash one –on from an elevated tee. I think it’s a great ending hole, so kudos to Kulim…you have passed the Gilagolf aesthetic test! Now we certify that your course does not look like a piece of dung.

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Fun Factor ( 2/5)

Fun? It was hard to have fun in a british open weather like the one that caught us. It might have been a great round, otherwise, so we’ll just leave it at 2. The par 3 was really an eye opener, but aside from that and aside from the ending hole, there wasn’t much wow in Kulim. It’s sort of a mixture of UPM, Bangi  and Kundang kind of lay out.

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Conclusion

This review does sound a little languid. Kulim is one of those courses that’s neither here nor there. You can’t really get too angry with a club that’s willing to let you play for 30RM and not have a crowd. So in that sense, Kulim was an easy, relaxing experience. As for it being premium and having a wow factor, it doesn’t. It’s there, it’s just like one of the peripheral characters in a movie that you don’t really notice or care for. It’s Lando Clarisan to Han Solo, it’s Sallah to Indiana Jones, it’s that tribal leader’s best friend in Avatar, I don’t even know his name. Darn, he sure is obscure.

kulimavatar


The good: Price is cheaper than most of your haircuts; travel isn’t too difficult; surprisingly reasonable fairway and interesting aesthetics; good par 3 7th and a good ending hole to take home.

The bad: Greens are not well kept; rough is also unkept, and bunkers not well maintained; pretty much ordianary layout, reminiscent to Kundang and Bangi; why did we travel to Kedah again?

The skinny: 17 of 40 divots (42.5%). We do recommend Kulim, if you are in the area and you’re a little tight on moolahs or have spent it all in Penang makan. It offers a reasonable experience of golf, nothing more.

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Kulim GRC Information

Address:Pesiaran Kulim Golf,
Kulim Golf & Country Resort,
Kulim Hi-Tech Park, 09000
Kulim, Kedah Darul Aman,
Malaysia

Contact: +604-4032828

Fax: +604-4032888

Email: kgcr@tm.net.my

Website:http://www.khtp.com.my/krdbweb/images/golf/golf1.htm

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Gilanalysis 10: Seri Selangor

Handicap:20

Gross: 97

Net: 77

Verdict: Slow progress…but signs of daylight…

What Happened

For some reason, Seri Selangor always seem to play like a sadistic course. The greens in the back nine was great…very fast, but hey, that’s Seri Selangor greens for you…but the front nine, again they were sanding it. I don’t know why, but it seems to be always under some sort of maintenance or improvement, so the greens sucked. And the rough was holding on to our balls like a pitbull. Some holes, my eight iron was mashed to pieces and could only get the ball to trickle like, hmm, 20 metres?

But a lot of the screw ups were mainly self inflicted. The easy 11th, I decided to tee up with my 3-wood for safety. Note to hackers: Tee off with 3-wood is BAD ADVICE. Because of our retarded swing, it makes no difference, we’re still going to skull it, thin it, toe it etc and the only difference from the driver is how far it goes. This time, I toed it and it skittered to the right rough. Deep rough. 8 iron advanced it only as far as the tree. Another 6 iron punch into the bunker. 4th and 5th shot to get out. 6th putt missed and settle for triple on the easiest hole!

I did make up for it by negotiating the treacherous 16th with a booming drive and a 9 iron in . Chip, putt for par. Same thing on 17th, except approached it with my hybrid and chip, one putt for par.

Front nine was disastrous. The easy 8th par 3 was stupidly hit into the trees on the right…and lost it! 3rd shot skittered down to the left, one chip and two putted my way to a triple.

The only pars on the nine coming in was the index 3, that needed a good drive, and a disciplined 7 iron. The last hole, another good drive, and an 8-iron to 6 feet (which I missed of course).

Why I Sucked

I think my drive was ok, except in Seri Selangor there is no getting out of jail. Some good drives kicked into the trees etc and chances to get out is as slim as Kate Moss on a 40-day fast. But I am trying my darnest to stop my propensity to dig. I messed up a few well placed shot by cangkuling the ground into pieces. Stop the landscape business and I will get better.

Not So Sucked

Driver was hot and cold. My misses now veers to the left because I strengthened my right hand grip..at least I think that is the reason…my golf IQ is only slightly higher than an iguana’s. But a few booming drives helped me stick par in the Index 2,3 and 4 hole, something I have never achieved before in Seri Selangor. On those holes, my irons worked. I also switched my blade putter back to a mallet putter to handle the devilish greens better.

What to Work On

Aside from my landscaping business, my pitching was atrocious. On the fourth hole, I managed to amazingly skull my 3rd shot pitch from 20 metres away from the green, into the jungle behind and lost ball. Also on the par 5 18th, 30 metres from the green, my third shot plonked into the bunker face, and took me 2 to get out. Fix the pitching and stop the changkuling!

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Legends GCR

Introduction

Our second leg of our Johor tour took us to Legends Golf and Country Resort. We chose it because it boasted of being developed by three of the biggest names in golf, Nicklaus, Palmer and Player. Although, I personally think it’s a marketing hack: Nicklaus designed the 18 hole course, Palmer designed the 9 hole course, and Player designed the 0 hole course.

As in there’s NO GARY PLAYER course there.

But we didn’t let it spoil our fun. After circling our way around Singapore, we finally got out of Tuas, back into BolehLand and began our merry journey into the blissful unknown.

Travel (0/5)

For those traveling to Legends GCR, it’s as bad as going to Damai Laut. I know, some courses are really worth it, but is it funny putting your customers through such excruciating torture of traveling and traveling and traveling to get to your darn course?? Why is the course buried so deep into the wilderness, is this some sort of Jurassic Park Wildlife preservation centre? Here comes the classic map:

We just love maps that are deceivingly simple, and that has no regard at all to proper reflection of distances. Again, this is mainly due to the fact that most golf course maps are generated by a company called Zoo Negara that employs eight Borneo chimps to draw out the maps.

OK, from Tuas, or from KL, depending where you are coming from, you want to hit the exit 252, to Kulaijaya. Once you hit the Kulai Toll, there’s quite a long straight road, lined with palm oil trees. At the end you will hit a T-junction, with a huge Carrefour (or was it Tesco) on your left. Turn left and you will perhaps undergo the longest, most torturous, most annoyingly signless road ever to be found on earth. In fact, I don’t know what is it with Johor and the extreme aversion to putting up signs. We finally ended up just following this Singaporean car, because we assumed that no Singaporeans in their right barnacles would be coming to such a god forsaken place unless it was to play golf. Or negotiate a kidnap ransom. Or sell palm oil. Easy guess.

Anyways, from the map on the Legends website, this trunk road from hell is only approximately one inch, which is about the same length as the road coming in until Tesco. The real map in google maps is almost 2.5 times the distance. There you go, another reason why Borneo Chimps are proven to be poor cartographers. You need to drive past this town called Kelapa Sawit. No kidding. They named a town after a tree. As in, translated, the town is called ‘Oil Palm’, and they deservedly won the nation’s most creative naming of a town. It’s like calling your town, ‘Cow’ if there are many cows, or ‘Coconut’ if there are many coconuts, or ‘Sand’ if it’s next to the sea. Well, at least they are descriptive.

Anyway, after Kelapa Sawit, you will eventually see a right turn into Legends GCR. You immediately go past the guard house, yaaay! And find out that from the guard house to the actual club house, is about 10 kilometers, making it the world’s longest drive way for a golf course.

It’s an absolutely stupid travel experience.

Price (1/5)

Finally reaching the spot, we were welcomed to quite a nice view of the club house. We registered ourselves using the Top Premier Voucher for RM87 each. I thought, hey, wait a minute, isn’t the green fee complimentary? Why did I have to pay RM87?

“For the buggy,” replied the sleepy eye registration lady.

“So 87 for the buggy? 40 something per person?”

“No, it’s 87 per person.”

“For the buggy??!? So it’s…(calculating) 174 per buggy???”

“Yes.”

Congratulations, Jack Nicklaus, Palmer and Player, you guys have officially won the world record for not just the longest drive way, but also the most cutthroat pricing ever for a golf buggy. That 170RM buggy better have GPS. And Turbo Nitro. And wings.

Later, I found out the truth. Legends charge RM85 per game per person with buggies etc included. Because we used the voucher, we weren’t eligible for the RM85 promotion, so we had to pay the cutthroat price instead.  If you wanted to play 9 hole, you also need to pay RM80. So to break it down for the confused:

Walk in – RM85 promotion, all in

With a complimentary Green Fee VOUCHER – RM87 for buggy, per person

9 Hole – RM80

Now, why didn’t they tell us not to use the damn voucher, when a normal walk in was only RM85? With a voucher, I paid RM2 more!! Why did I spend my money to buy vouchers, when it made me LOSE money?

Completely daft pricing arrangement, Legends. We are giving you a one, because at least it’s still not over RM100 to play. But still, please change your management to people who can actually understand what numbers are.

First thoughts

Not great first impressions, isn’t it? Once you get out of the changing room, turn left, and immediately the course opens up to the view of the Palmer 9.

And you go: “Aaaah.”

You are standing on an elevated platform, with an entire view of the course, and you suddenly forgive the darn Borneo Chimps, the idiots that price the course and you think, “Heck, this is why I pick up Golf.”

We got into our RM170 buggy (it looked like a normal buggy, by the way, in fact, slightly retarted driving wheel), and we chugged to the first hole on the other side.

Service (1/5)

I’d like to give high scores for the service, seeing that the caddy master (I think it was a girl, but I swear, she looked, sounded, walked like a man) was very efficient, got us out into the course at maximum efficiency.

But two things bothered us.

One, the fact that we were not informed of the promotional rate and using our vouchers, we got the worse end of the deal. Why, why do you want to purposely cheat your customers? What joy does it bring? Isn’t it enough that we had to travel through Mordor to reach your clubhouse?

Two, if you happen to eat your lunch there, good luck. Legends GCR is the land of the flies. As in once your food arrives, there are literally hundreds of flies swarming around you. I HATE FLIES. Because they’ve been in a lot of shit. And Legends GCR, for all your premium pretension, you are NEVER gonna make it if I have to eat with one hand constantly moving to swat flies away. Get those electrical blue lights that zap flies! Or hire a guy to walk around with the electrical badminton racquet to save your patrons. Don’t ever eat anything there, because it’s a filthy place to eat.

Fairways (4/5)

Finally, to the course itself. And whatever sins Legends GCR has caused in service and travel, it made it up a bit by giving us the finest patch of fairways we’ve seen in a long while. It reminded us of  Bukit Jawi, not as pristine as Tropicana, but very very nice. Coming from the hell hole called Royal Johor, we definitely agree to good fairways.

Greens (3/5)

The greens were not perfect by any means. It didn’t look very good either, with small patches of bald turf and sand appearing, but the roll itself was reasonably good, and definitely a lot more easy to predict and putt on. Mediocre Green, coming from better fairways. The greens also lost some points due to some Blue Grass disease that popped up, notably on the 9th and a few other holes. As in, these are literally BLUE patches, as if someone spilled a bucket of paint on it. I can’t understand why, but I guess it didn’t really affect the greens too much, except now, we need to call them ‘blues’. Get it? Stupid joke, I know.

Rough (4/5)

Rough was actually qute well preserved. The leaves were annoying, but the bunkers were pretty good where we played it. Well conditioned, it retained a lot more fluff despite the rain. This meant we could actually use our sand wedge with more bounce to get out as opposed to our 48 or 60 degrees for more dig. It really sounds like I know what I’m talking about, but honestly, I have a golf digest next to me, and I’m just randomly selecting some key words to give golfers a boner. Which by the way, have you noticed how many key words in golf resemble innuendoes? Soft and hard shaft. Lots of bounce. Get your wedge in there. Get in the hole. Good with your putter. Long and hard. Your club has a big head. I think those Scottish folks that invented golf could also be quite perverse.

Aesthetics (4/5)

We like the aesthetics. Even though I was having a complete melt down in my game, I still managed to take a walk and enjoy the scenery when I could. The first hole is a relatively simple shot, get up the slight knoll and you have a nice view at a lowered green that is generous on the misses to the left. Unfortunately I shanked my second shot into oblivion and started one of the worst games in my already patchy career.

The par 5 hole 3 is a very good looking tee off, both intimidating as well as precise, a 500m monster that plays long and straight.

The index 1 hole 5 is also quite a monster, fading shots will be guided into the oil palm hell by a ravine slipping away on the right of the fairway. Aim it too far left like what I did, and you are in OB land. It’s actually a very annoying view, because you think it’s wide, when actually it’s not. The elevation gives you that trickery, very much like the illusions we have playing KGPA. Hole 6 is another elevated tee box staring down at a fairway with bunkers dotting the right, a jungle waiting left and right. This is actually a fun hole to play because you can route your second shot over the water to another strip of fairway, or you can play it safe, and hit the 3rd shot over the water. In fact, hole 6 is considered the signature hole and we liked it, even if we were playing like wookies having too much sa-ke.

Hole 8 par 3 is a nice little number nestled in a dale (wow, my description is truly getting more and more Enid Blytonish!) I like it simply because I managed to get my first par there. No big deal right? BIG DEAL for me. I was shanking and topping my way furiously, losing a great deal of moolahs on the way.

Hole 9 plays pretty long but we found the fairway and from there, the trip coming in was a nice lofted 7 iron into the centre of the pin. Not. I topped the ball on the way to another bogey. AUGH!

The aesthetics continue to be impressive on the back nine, you have an elevated fairway to negotiate on the 10th,  and the 11th is where the crap hits the fan. It is an extremely elevated tee box with a view of the pond on the left and a very very narrow landing zone on the fairway. The back nine, though pretty is a HOOKER’s nightmare. I was having a terrific hooking day, and almost every hole had ponds running the left side, and on 13 and 14th,  my tee shots all found watery graves. 15th was a nice par 3 with water on the right (at least), but hole 16th and 17th were back with water on the left.

Aesthetically, I liked the 18th best. Because it didn’t have water. But it also required a long carry over a network of bunkers to have a sight of the green. I cleared the bunkers and my second almost carried to the green. However, I duffed my pitch and ended up with a bogey. Nice end to a horrid nine.

Fun Factor (3/5)

Technically, I didn’t have so much fun because I just couldn’t figure out my game. I have now, sort of, but at that point of time, playing this course, I was taking it too deep inside on my backswing, which caused me to reroute tremendously coming down and ‘getting stuck’, and continuously toeing the darn ball and hooking it badly.

Did we have fun? Our fourball weren’t playing too well, only one guy managed to break 100 (we don’t know how, since he lost as many balls as we did, but hey…) However, due to the nature of the course, it’s definitely worth another try when the golf swing is back. I’d like to take on the prodigiously difficult holes with left water again and the layout of the course was something that you would definitely equate with ‘good design’. Hole 6 was very fun, with each of us choosing different routes to the green and of course, hole 18th was bewitching with its series of bunkers.

As for my game, my pars all came in the par 3s, and the explosions came primarily due to either water balls, or OB balls. Tough game, but good course, nonetheless.

Conclusion

Even if we have only tried a grand total of 2 courses in Johor so far, we believe that Legends could be a top tiered course in Johor, and definitely recommended to be played. The course visuals are reminiscent of Bukit Jawi, but a little better, with a mixture of tight fairways that reward precision, and open savannahs for the basher. I prefer the hills course than the water, but strangely, I scored better (or not so bad) in the water course. (likely due to my balls being in hazard as opposed to OB). While the course experience is good, stay away from the F&B and its flies infested food; and try not to get cheated by the people at the counter.

The good: The course is aesthetically pleasing; well preserved fairways, rough and reasonable roll on greens; a good mixture of precision and basher; elevated landing areas allows you to open up the courses with some well placed shots.

The bad: The travel experience is horrible; the Borneo Chimps really messed up the map badly this time; be careful of the people behind the counter and their RM170 buggy hoax; flies are all over the clubhouse, making it more of a toilet than a food place; greens had a bit of blue, but otherwise is fine.

The skinny: 20 of 40 divots (50%). The course itself actually scored a lot of high marks, but a pity on the pricing, service and travel though. If you could look past these transgressions (which we could not), you can definitely have a good golf experience in the Legends course. Just pray that your hook doesn’t kick in during the back 9, and you should be fine! Recommended if you can take the travel and eat somewhere else.

Legends GCR  Scorecard

Legends GCR Information

Address: Lot 1302, Kebun Sedenak, PO Box 11

8100 Kulai, Johor, Malaysia

Contact: +607 – 6524388

Fax: +607-6526388

Website: http://www.legends-resort.com

Email: enquiry@legends-resort.com


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Kajang Hill Golf Club

Introduction

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

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

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

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

Travel (3 /5)

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

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

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

Price ( 1/5)

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

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

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

First thoughts

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

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

Service ( 3/5)

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

Fairways ( 2/5)

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

Greens (3/5)

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

Rough ( 2/5)

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

Aesthetics (3/5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun Factor (3/5)

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Kajang Hill Scorecard

Kajang Hill Information

Address:

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

Contact: +603-8723 7777 / 3801

Fax: +603-8723 7337

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

Email: info@kajanghill.com

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Templer Park Country Club

Introduction

I’ve waited quite a long time to play at Templer Park, and thinking that my game was coming around after an 83 at Bangi, I was pretty confident of doing well. See, Templer Park is a player’s course. So if you do well there, you know you’re getting somewhere in your game. Plus, it’s quite a premier course as well, and after seeing pictures of that mountain thingy (it’s called Takun Mountain, though it’s really theoretically a limestone rock), it’s a must play course for Gilagolf, up there with Clearwater, Saujana, Palm and Datai.

Travel (3/5)

As a kid, I recall traveling for hours to get to Templer’s Park. It used to be so darn far! Now with the wonderful advent of modern roads, pristine Malaysian forests are plowed down so we can get from the city to the remaining pristine forests in shorter time. The easiest way is from PJ, head over to Kepong. After the LDP toll, stay right and go up the flyover and you’ll be heading towards Batu Caves. Look for signs for Ipoh where you’ll need to turn off. At the roundabout, take a left and you’ll be on the old Ipoh road. From there, it’s 21 KM down a scenic drive and you need to make a U turn and Templer’s Park Golf is on your left. You’ll come to a T junction and you’ll see Templer and Perangsang, i.e Heaven and Hell. Guess which one to take?

The only disadvantage is that it gets very jam during rush hour. The entire area is clogged up for some reason, and though it’s accessible, you need to leave early to get there in time. Oh yeah, Templer Park is very anal about their tee time. You miss it, it’s too bad for you. You’ll get bumped down the food chain.

Price (2/5)

The cheapest way to play at Templer is to purchase the Top Premier book for about RM160. It has 2-3 vouchers for Templer park, and you end up paying about 50 bucks or something to play. Else, if you’re a walkin, you’ll be spitted upon and charged 135RM for a weekday. Seriously, get the Top Premier book.

Now, I understand if it’s RM135 on a weekday. I get it. It’s a top course. It has many Japanese speaking people there. It has this huge hill that looks like the crystal rock I have on my office table. I get it. What I don’t get is this: WHY ARE YOU CHARGING US NORMAL PRICE WHEN YOUR COURSE IS OBVIOUSLY NOT PLAYING NORMAL??

It gets a 2, and you’ll see later what we’re so pissed off about.

First thoughts

Class. Those were my thoughts. I liked the changing room. You take off your shoes. Very Japanese. I liked the F&B area, there’s a wide garden and the huge lime rock looks over you. And the course looks fascinating. Everything here reeks of class…and I think for a change from all the other golf clubs, it really is cool. And also, one of the Gilalogy is this: If there’s a course that is next door or nearby, almost always your course will be extra good, if it’s the better one. Look at Kota Permai. It overshadows Bukit Kemuning. Palm Garden overshadows UPM. Across the road here is Perangsang. I’ve never played there, but I heard it’s a poor man’s Templer. So, we’ll give it a miss for now.

Service (4/5)

The moment you get down from your car, you’ll be greeted by eager caddies. I like the service for the little things they do. Like having a specially modified buggy to take the golf sets without piling them lock stock and barrel into a normal buggy like the stupid Bukit Kemuning and Tiara Melaka. It’s very considerate of them. The check in was quick and painless, the locker room clean, and the buggy waiting area very orderly. The caddie needed some work, because she kept giving me the wrong yardage and she couldn’t find my ball on the third hole when I clocked up a triple, but overall, very good service.

Fairways (2/5)

Ok, now you will see why we’re so pissed.

The first 3 fairways were unplayable. That’s right. I mean this wasn’t just a part of it that was being maintained. They were ripping up the entire course! I see chunks of dirt and carpets of grass littering the whole course like gigantic cow dung. I see casual water around the first fairway, I see my ball resting a huge clump of dirt and I can’t even drop, since, the whole fairway was stuffed up. Holes that you could sprain your ankles in. For a while, I wanted to march back up to the nice registration lady who gave me an A Class service and shout, “I PAID RM135 FOR THIS?!”

Of course, in a civilized world, that would be unacceptable, so we bit the bullet, struggled through the first few holes.

After the 3rd hole, the fairways finally reverted back to normal condition, which was pretty good. But it doesn’t save it. You charge me RM135 to essentially play 16 holes since the 2nd hole was a par 3.

Greens (4/5)

Thank God they weren’t messing around with greens as well. Templer green was almost perfect. We were all a little spoilt after Beringin, but it held up to the rain very well. One thing about Templer is that the greens are huge. I don’t know if it’s me, but regulation doesn’t mean a thing. I thought my putting was pretty ok, but I struggled like a monkey getting the speed right. At the par 5 12th, I made a complete fool of myself, where putting off the front, I putted off it, and three putted back in. It was just one of those days. I think we were all a little upset over the condition of the fairways, since all of us struggled the first few holes.

Rough (3/5)

The rough here punishes us in a way that Clearwater does. Because Templer is deceivingly long (at 6150m, it’s medium but for some reason, it plays almost 300m longer), the rough catches your ball and turns your par 4s to par5s and your par5s to God knows what. I was actually driving very well—I avoided the dreaded duck hook, my crapshot, and this time, I was pushing the ball right (which was an improvement to me, trust me). Several times I landed into trouble with the ample water, but the first 9 was supposed to be easier, and I scored a massive 49 on it. Most of this was because of the bunkers.

There is a LOT OF BUNKERS. Can’t say anything anymore. It severely degrades your game when you hit a bunker, hit out and hitting 3 into the green from 140 – 150 meters and hope it’s close for par or at least bogey. Make a mistake and hit one in the bunker again, you’ll likely look at some inflated scoring.

Aesthetics (5/5)

The selling point is always the aesthetics of Templer. With that gigantic crystal rock overlooking everything, every hole plays to its shadows. It’s quite imposing, and we played the first nine under clear skies, but the weather made a U turn and down came the rain again, spoiling another good game.

When the rain dissipated, the course took on an even more surreal look; with low hanging clouds hugging the Takun Mountain, and drifting around the course. Templer is quite a beauty, every hole bringing in a different look. The par 4 3rd plays flat as flat can be; yet the imposing 15th par 5 is framed by jungle on both sides and takes a huge dive down into the green; cascading down like a lush, green waterfall. The snarling 169m par 3 8th requires a deadly carry over water, and bunker. The magnificent par 4 12th takes a risky path over jungle down to a narrow strip of fairway. The beautiful par 3 16th, a elevated tee shot to a green peeking over a brook, that has a stone bridge across it, a’la Hogan Bridge in Augusta. The par 4 17th, at 425 is highly impressive, and with a good drive and a hybrid, I only managed to kiss the front lip of the humongous green.

And of course, the signature ending hole, the 18th. The mountain looked down at us, frowning at our antics as we smashed 3 balls each to see if we can get it up to the upper tiered fairway, across the lake. The carry over water was about 210 meters or so, and with 3 balls, I managed to cross but couldn’t get it to the upper tier, settling at a small landing area about 90 meters from the hole. Only one of us, with a massive drive managed to reach the top tier. He skulled his approach and settled for a bogey while I parred it, and brought back at least a good memory of my otherwise forgettable game.

Fun Factor (4/5)

It’s not often you can say you had a lot of fun when you stumble to a 94. I actually played better than I scored, for once. And strangely played better at the harder 9 coming in. Except for the first hole, I didn’t descend into my patented crapshot, the low duck hook that veers right to left about 100 meters down the other fairway or right into OB. Of course, I went to the other extreme, the big push to the right, which caused my triple bogey on the 3rd by blasting it over the fence into oblivion. Two holes later, I pushed my shot into the lake, hit my 3rd into the rough, lost it (this is where I was a little annoyed with the caddie), chipped illegally my 6th and carded my second triple. I had 2 doubles on both sides of the nines, but I actually played a lot better after the downpour except for the stupid shot at 16th where I duffed it into the drink.

There are a couple of things you need to be careful of:

1) The distance markers suck. Really, they do. They actually measure only to the front of the green, usually where the deep bunkers lie in wait. In the cart, there is a crude drawing (I wished I photographed it!) of the pin positions of the day and additional yardage calculation. Why they do this, only heaven knows. It’s not as if we are smart enough to keep referring back to the drawing. We usually just get down from the buggy, walk and hit, and walk again. Which brings me to my second point:

2) The caddies aren’t superb either. Actually we only had one, and she wasn’t great. She kept giving us yardages that were shorter. She claims she’s calculating in meters and telling us to the middle of the flag but she’s lying. I doubt she can calculate yards to meters on the fly. I bet she’s simply subtracting 30 away, because Templer’s average yards per hole is 375, which is about 343, so minus 30 right. Now if it’s 100 yards, she’ll say its 70 meters. But it actually is 91.44 meters! CRAPSHOOT! So lots of the high score came not from lousy shots but from shots that were short. And in Templer, short means in the drink or in the bunker. Beware of the converting caddie. Just tell her to give you in yards and you make your own judgement.

3) Your buggy can sit 4 people! It’s crazy cool! Of course it’s more difficult to control, but hey, it’s quite a good invention. Drive with care….

4) Templer Park’s notorious for having ghost stories. One of it was that on the backswing, you’ll see your caddie at the corner of your eye behind you, but when you’ve hit it, she’s in front of you. Another one is that the ghost will applaud and say “Good Shot!” in one of the par 3s. Another one is that they will see an extra ball on the green. Another one is that when your ball goes into the jungle, it will be thrown out again. I like the last ghost best, but I didn’t see any of it, so I’ll just assume as I always do, that ghosts are a bunch of bollocks. Here’s what I got from a forum:

“Prisoners were executed and buried here during the 2nd. world war by the Japanese army. Coincidentally this golf course was the first to introduce night golfing. But night golfing stopped after a short while.”

Conclusion

Except for the first three holes, the experience of Templer Park was really good. First, you’ll need an A game here. OB doesn’t often come in play but the bunkers really kill you. They are littered everywhere! For a course that’s not too far out of the way, its striking beauty will definitely leave an impression on you. The holes are championship material, the course well designed, and the greens very well maintained. If they fix their fairways, this will be an A-list course for sure.

The good: Decent travel time; superb scenery; greens are almost immaculate; tough, challenging rough forces you to keep the ball in the short stuff; every hole has distinct personality; 4 seater buggy is a cool idea.

The bad: The price! With lousy fairways, they should be decent enough to slash it for us; distance hard to gauge; caddie is below average, yet have to tip her; tougher back 9 for short hitters; ghosts don’t throw the ball out; monkeys will attack your buggy (serious this one).

The skinny: 27 of 40 divots (67.5%). It’s not the best we’ve played but for the view, it’s definitely worth braving the jam and ghosts to get there. If you do well here, you’ll probably do well in most courses in Malaysia. A definite go for us.

Templer Park Scorecard

Templer Park Information

Address:

Templer Park Country Club

KM21, Jalan Rawang, Rawang

48000 Kuala Lumpur,

Selangor, Malaysia

Contact: +603-60919111

Fax: +603-60919807

Email: many_sp@tpcc.com.my

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

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SSG Beringin Golf Club

Introduction

You know the school nerd that suddenly gets hot once she gets past the teenage years? Well, we’ve been hearing a lot about Beringin for some time. Now, I have never played there before but I recall one day, early in my golf career, when I was cangkul-ling the ground at Bukit Beruntung, I complained out loud to my brother: “We traveled all the way for this??” Because, at that time, Beruntung was crap. I don’t know how it is now, but it used to be the entire fairway was like a giant bunker. Not only for one hole. But for 18 bloody holes!

My brother responded, “You should be glad you’re not at Lembah Beringin, it’s even worse!”

And from there on, Lembah Beringin has become synonymous to crap, lousy, piece of stool, mother of all crappy courses, a gigantic piece of dung…you get the idea. It seems awfully unfair to rate it like that before we even see it, but you know, I have a high regard for my brother’s advice. And anything worse than Beruntung has gotta be something beyond our wildest nightmare.

Recently we keep hearing how Lembah Beringin has changed, due to Saujana taking over. Now, Saujana are the geniuses who gave us Impiana and of course Saujana course. Golfers who went to Beringin, came back with wonderful tales of a glorious change, of a magnificent course worthy to be a championship course. It wasn’t just a name change—ditching the unpronounceable-to-foreigners ‘Lembah’ was a good idea. It removed any obvious name jokes golfers are so notorious for: like Lembik Beringin, (Weakling) Lembu Beringin (Cow), Lemas Beringin (Drowning), Lebam Beringin (Bruising). Golfers who crack such stupid jokes and laugh at it should be shot on sight with a 12 gauge shotgun, and remains fed to hyenas.

Anyway, due to such exciting news of the newly called SSG Beringin, we packed up into a car and headed up north to this mythical course.

Travel (3/5)

We absolutely hate traveling to the northern course (i.e north of Klang Valley). Where as you see the southern courses are all closely clustered (Bangi, Kajang, Palm Garden, UPM, Impiana etc), the northern courses always feels as if you need to pack your passport. Anything after Rawang, and we’re hitting the outer reaches of space. But we’ll try to be fair and give more points to courses that are easily accessible, even if they are located in Timbuktu. To get to Beringin (we will just call the darn course SSG now, shall we?), it’s easy, head to the NKVE (you know how to get there don’t you?), easiest from the Damansara Toll, and head to Ipoh/Rawang. You will travel a long, long time, past Rawang, past Bukit Beruntung and finally arrive at the Lembah Beringin Exit. Take that and ta-da! The course is right next to the turn off. It’s that easy. In fact, it’s so easy, it doesn’t even need a map. If you can’t find it, you don’t deserve to be called a fully functional seeing man. Or woman, as if women actually read this blog.

Because it doesn’t try to purposely waste our petrol like Bukit Unggul, we are going to give it a 3. It’s far, but it’s easy to find.


Price (4/5)

We paid RM65 all in, and they didn’t force any caddy on us, which is good, because we don’t like paying extra, especially after burning so much petrol to get here. In fact, I’ll have to admit, the price was pretty good, considering we were walk ins and in normal cases, walk ins are treated only slightly better than the cow dung remover. Not the person removing the cow dung, but the actual equipment itself. So it was good that they didn’t slaughter us with some ridiculous pricing like 120RM or something, and use the Saujana name to justify the price.

First thoughts

One guy from my flight mentioned that Beringin was a short and easy course.

“No OB one!” he stoutly declared.

He is obviously one of those who fall under the non functional seeing man category. The first hole itself was a daunting dogleg right, to cut, you have to fly over the jungle. I made it, but took 3 to get on and stupidly 3 putted for a double bogey start.

The course was short, definitely. Easy? Not really.

Service (1/5)

Service is definitely not their strongest point. Firstly, the registration girl was so slow, we thought we had entered into an X dimension where time is slowed to half. Seriously, she was just staring blankly at the computer screen for a few moments while the queue was piling up behind us. I finally had enough and got my friend to stand in there while I changed. The changing room wasn’t any better. It had a musty smell of bad ventilation. I changed and came out after 15 minutes, and yep, the line was still there, and we still had to wait.

The cracker would be this. Apparently, this club has no sirens. Sirens, as in not the mythical sea creatures, but the ominous horn that sounds the death knell for all golfers: lightning, stop playing. We struggled through our round with heavy rain at the later half, and as we didn’t hear the siren, we thought, well, let’s trust the club’s lightning meter and play on.

It finally struck us as we teed up the 18th in a blizzard like rain, with no visibility and sheets of water cascading down on us, and us drenched to the bone; that we might not have heard the siren go off. Surely, that was a flash of lightning. And another and another. And here’s like a whole series of them, crackling up above us, as the wind whipped up water like Noah’s flood. We looked around us and saw we were right under high tension wires, carrying probably 1000000 volts of electrical current, in a thunderstorm.

We abandoned the last hole, put in an arbitrary score and headed back to the clubhouse. We went straight to the marshal sitting there, warm as a puppy, with a sleepy look on his face and we demanded, where the heck was their siren? Did it sound at all?

With a shrug, he said, “Tak Tahu”, which translates to, “Don’t know, but you are morons to be playing in this weather.” I doubt there’s any sirens in this club! DARNIT! We could have been fried chicken out there! How can you NOT know if there was a siren or not?

Fairways (2/5)

Bah, cowgrass. I hate to sound picky, since my home course is also cow grass, but after playing in Bermuda, going back to cowgrass simply sucked. Plus, the fairway wasn’t holding up well in the rain. At times, I had to wade through the water to get to my ball. Even the second hole, a long 525m par 5 had fairways narrower than Kate Moss, so stupid as we were, we thumped our drivers nearly into oblivion. No OB? This course was all OB, dude!! But the lower score is really for it’s condition. Besides not holding well up to the rain, the fairway had patches of sand and was fairly bald in many places.

Greens (5/5)

We see what the fuss is about. The greens were apparently called TifEagle, which has as much meaning to us than the word garbulomumbo. Call it what you want, the greens in this club really, really rocked. As in, what a green. While all the other aspects were bad, or medium bad, once you’re on the green, you’re like in a velvet carpet. It’s that good. The ball bit, spun, danced, and basically showed us once again that if Saujana specializes in anything, it’s their greens. Despite the drizzle, the greens played fast, causing me to 3 putt twice in the first 3 holes, before getting used to it. If there’s anything that’s worth the travel, price and struggle through the fairways, it’s the greens. Top notch.

Rough (3/5)

Say what you like about SSG, it punishes way ward shots, and that means all of ours. We like the grip it and rip it style of Palm Garden, Bukit Kemuning, and don’t really fancy constipated courses like Nilai Springs and Seremban 3. Unfortunately, SSG lands in the latter category. There are a few exceptions, but most of the holes, from the narrow par 5 2nd and 7th, to the skinny 15th with hazard on the right. Bring lots of balls and if you’re not confident with your driver, use a 5 wood to negotiate. No kidding. If we had stuff the big dog back into the bag and use our 5 wood, we would have scored like 67 on this course. Well, thereabouts. As it is, being typically monkey-like golfers, we always think our next drive would be better, until we lose a dozen balls or more. Tough rough.

Aesthetics (2/5)

As much as we love the TifEagle greens, the rest of the course just wasn’t extremely picturesque. Unlike Bukit Unggul (as much as we hate that course, you gotta admit, it’s quite pretty), where the OB is lined with jungle; the OB here is typically lalang and ‘semak samun’. I don’t know what it’s called in English. Like those grass that reclaims the land, kind of. It’s not pretty, but worse, there’s no way that your ball might careen off a branch and come back in play, since there’s no branches. It’s just hip deep waste bushes that will eat up your balls.

One thing about Beringin, is that it is a dead town. I think the history was that everyone thought the international airport was going to be up north of Klang Valley, so housing estates like Beruntung and Beringin sprouted up, hoping to cash in. Lots of buyers bought homes there, to be a step ahead. Suddenly, the airport went south to Sepang, and homeowners in Beringin were left to die. I heard a story of someone who purchased his home for 150,000RM and now, the selling price is about 80,000RM.

Around the golf course, you see homes that were supposed to be grand golf homes, like those at Tropicana, but now, overgrown with weeds, Mother Nature is taking it back. It’s actually very depressing. We couldn’t wait to scoot out of there. We half expected wide eyed creatures peeking out from the soulless windows hissing, “Come, my preciousssssss.” Yikes!

Fun Factor(3/5)

We actually had quite a nice time, even though we were struggling like baboons being forced to undergo acupuncture. The OB really got the better of us. But the 10th hole was a cracker. It’s a 290 meter drivable par 4 from an elevated tee box. You’re probably at the highest point and us being golf cowboys, snapped up our drivers, sauntered to the white tees, and let it rip to the green. There’s a huge raving fronting the green so anything that can’t carry 250 meters is in deep do-do. From the white, you needed about 270 to reach the green. From the elevated tee box, we gauged that a 250 meter drive would do the trick, with 230 to cross the ravine.

Both of us who tried made it. In fact, my friend, hit it so long, it reached the black tee of the next hole, over a pair of Korean women teeing up at the red. Mine landed in deep rough at the side and I stumbled around for a par.

Conclusion

If you have a group of jokers who’ll keep you from dying of boredom, it’s actually quite worth the drive to Beringin. I mean, look, if you were planning to head out to Beruntung, you can go the extra mile or so, right? The greens are certainly worth your attention, and you better enjoy it now, in case SSG decides to pull out of the club like they did for Impiana. Unlike Impiana, Beringin just doesn’t have the volume of visitors to keep it from descending back into reclaimed land.

The good: The greens, definitely; the course is very strategically located right next to the turn off; challenging holes like the 10th makes it fun; reasonably well maintained; reasonable pricing

The bad: Heavy on the petrol; fairways are not so great; narrowness of the course might not suit some; aesthetically depressing; deaf and blind marshals that cannot hear or see lightning; there’s no bloody siren.

The skinny: 23 of 40 divots (57.5%). We expected nothing much from the course and got something out of it. We will likely give it another go, if the price of petrol comes down…which might be 50 years from now when we learn the art of teleportation. Still, it’s a go…you gotta try out the greens!

SSG Beringin Score Card

SSG Beringin Information

Address:
Lembah Beringin,
44110 Kuala Kubu Bahru,
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Contact: +603-64600016

Fax: +603-64600018

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Damai Laut GCC

Introduction

Wow, it’s been some time since we reviewed a course, and even longer that we’ve gone out of KL! So the opportunity came to play at Damai Laut GCC in Lumut, Perak, we snapped it up. Being the city brats we are, we have absolutely no idea where on earth is this Damai Laut located, but being the gila golfers, we readily took the challenge to go and hack it. Also, the hole 15, their signature hole. We like to play at courses that people talk about, and in this case, the course had quite a lot of prestigious sounding awards:

  1. 3rd most scenic course by Golf Malaysia 2005/2006.
  2. Hole #15 – second most scenic hole in Malaysia
  3. Hole #13 – third in Par Golf Super 18 Malysia Award.

With pedigree like that, you can’t go wrong can you? Damai Laut we go!!

Travel (2/5)

Now, let’s make this clear. Traveling to Damai Laut is SHEER TORTURE. But this is really a difficult category to judge because it’s very subjective how we view traveling individually. How did we give Datai Bay 3, when we had to take a bloody flight and drive halfway across the island? We measured it from where we were staying. Likewise, we’ll need to be fair in this. Nobody in their right mind will travel all the way to Damai Laut, play golf, and come back. We need to measure it from where we stayed, at Swiss Garden. In this case, it was right next door, but we’ll refrain from giving it a 5 because the resort is so ridiculously out of the way, it’s as if the hotel management wanted to start their own little country at the edge of Perak.

In fact the instructions to get to this forsaken place is so darn long, it warrants its own page for you to get through , and hopefully without falling asleep.

Driving from South Malaysia: http://www.damailaut.com/driving01.html

Driving from North Malaysia: http://www.damailaut.com/driving02.html

Crazy. Here’s the map.

We took the Bidor exit, but there are several ways to get there. The stupid thing is that there’s a place called Damar Laut. I think it’s a fake copy of the real Damai Laut. It’s unbelievable that there would be people out there that think this is a great idea. It’s like calling your son Tiger Wooks and get him to pose in red shirt and Nike Cap, and paint his face black. What’s the idea? If you ain’t Woods, you ain’t him! Damar Laut folks, what’s the deal??!

Unless you are a crazy person, refrain from driving there, play golf and coming back. From PJ, it took us 5 hours to get there. Umm, ok, we stopped and ate. A lot. Who cares? It’s a freaking long trip!

Price (3/5)

Unlike the published rates on the website, they gave us RM150 for all in, because we were guests at the Swiss Garden Resort, and because (we suspect), they have only gerbils to entertain the staff for the past 6 months. The course was like walking into a post apocalyptic world, like “I am Legend”. Beautiful, yet hauntingly empty.

We like the fact that even though it was quite a lot to pay for the weekday, at least they refrained from cutting our throats. They could have charged RM200 and we would have been forced to play, having traveled so far.

First thoughts

We packed 4 flights and zoomed off for an afternoon tee off, under the blazing hot sun. But being at the coast, a nice wind came up and it was certainly very, very refreshing to stand on the first tee, a blind hole that drops to the green, and even more so, when my first ball carved into a nice draw and rolled 250 meters down the fairway.

Damai Laut is HOT, not in the wow, she’s hot HOT, but the darn, I think I am gonna die, HOT. We played the first 9 as dry as dry can be and that’s why we were blasting our tee shots prodigiously. The turn, rain set in, and the wind whipped up so it was quite a good experience, to play Damai Laut dry, and then in British Open condition.

Service (1/5)

Now, I know they don’t really have a lot of guest that will come all the way to play the course, which makes it even more important to service us! We arrived at the club house, we had to take our bags from the car, and after waiting a while at the front and it became evident no living thing will greet us and take our bags in for us, we lugged our stuff all the way in. Come on, Damai Laut, you can do better than this. If you advertised your great service, how about giving us some respect and helping us out? At least in Datai, they really made you feel as if you are the king of the world (or the king of stupidity to pay RM350 for a game), but hey, at least. This gets a stingy 1 from gilagolf, because of their stingy service.

Fairways (4/5)

Like we mentioned earlier, we had a chance to test the course on both conditions: extremely dry and windy wet. I obviously preferred playing it dry because the ball runs and never stops. In my first 9, for those shots that caught the fairway, I never had a drive under 250 meters. It was highly entertaining. The fairways were a little patchy in some parts, but overall it played very very well. And even when wet, drainage was good, and it held up very well. Again, it’s a little short of perfect because the maintenance wasn’t as pristine as say Datai or Tropicana, but it’s among the best we played.

Greens (2/5)

Unfortunately the good feeling didn’t last, and we watched in dismay as Damai Laut’s greens fell hopelessly short of the condition expected in a premium course. Even on the first hole, one of my partners remarked with obvious distaste, “Why so sandy one?!?!”. It wasn’t as bad as Selesa (which to us is not a golf course, but a pile of junk that makes us prefer to eat live cockroaches than to play there again), but as one of the premier courses in Malaysia, we expect at least a little consistency in its greens. Nope what we had was sandy greens and in one hole, the par 5 5th, I had to almost chip with my putter to coax the ball uphill across the green with the amount of sand. A very disappointing 2.

Rough (3/5)

The rough wasn’t that much better. Several times I went into the rough and it’s not difficult enough to hit it out. Instead, a few times, the rough was so forgiving, it sat up like on a tee, allowing me to scramble for par the 2 times I missed the fairway on my front nine. We’re a strange breed. We complain that the rough is too tough and the rough is not too enough. The second 9 played slightly harder because as the rain came, our ball settled easier into the rough and boy, we struggled a bit.

Aesthetics (3/5)

OK, this is where we have the MOST gripe about. For the 3rd most scenic course in Malaysia, we’ll have to conclude that whoever did the poll was either secretly blind, or he was treated to 10 years free massage in Swiss Garden Resort. Because it’s nowhere near as pretty as Datai, or even Impiana or Meru. It’s probably thereabouts with Tiara Melaka or something, but there was just no wow factor, that made us go, well, WOW! We all expected the next hole to be better, and then the next hole, and then the next hole. But as we went along, it was evident, this was no Pebble Beach or Pinehurst. Being a coastal golf course, we expected a lot more. Even the darn scorecard promised a beautiful scenery and we all thought, ok, Hole #15 is simply going to blow our minds away.

We finally reached hole #15 and I went, “This can’t be right.” The tee box was next to the lake, which is green like milk tea, and all I saw was a dogleg right and some kids playing. That’s right. Kids. They just popped up from no where and played this signature hole and disappeared later. So we waited and mulled, “Is this the legendary 2nd most scenic hole in Malaysia?” “Are we too stupid to appreciate it?” From there, a hooked drive caused my ball to jump into the left rough and as we drove nearer, the beauty slowly unfolded.

It’s no big deal.

One, the picture on the scorecard is fake. The ocean is photoshopped into the card. The real hole #15 is nothing like it. The hole drops drastically to the green, but it’s not something we’ve never seen before. The sea is behind the green, but it’s not the open sea, it has Pangkor island listlessly sitting in the background. A ship was docked near the bay, blocking whatever beauty that was left, and adding to the disappointment of it all.

Golf Malaysia really screwed up on this one. I think they didn’t even come here to play. I think they were just sent a photoshopped picture, or the scorecard and in the letter told, “Nice hole, free massage for good reviews.”. In fact, we preferred the Hole #13 par 3, surrounded by bunkers.

We were so disappointed with this mythical 2nd most scenic hole, we played 4-5 balls each from the top of the hill into the green, like a driving range.

Fun Factor (4/5)

Despite Damai Laut’s fading into mediocrity, and the obvious disappointment of us all, that we drove all the way to play a course that resembles Nilai Springs or something, we still managed to have fun. One playing partner birdied the 2nd and did a jig that must be censored for the innocence of our sight. Perhaps we were all in a relaxed holiday mood and the weather was nice for the first 9. Whatever the reason, I went into a hot streak parring my first 6 holes, before dropping one at the 7th. On the 8th, I hit one of my best drive ever that hit the hill and rolled to about 30 meters away from the green, a 320 meter drive. Being so full of myself, I stupidly duffed my pitch, hit an embrassing chip and humiliated myself by missing my par putt.

On the very next hole, the 9th, it’s a drivable par 4 at 280 meters. You had to carry about 200 meters of water uphill, and on top of that, navigate your shot over the trees. The bail out was on the left, but already boiling over my previous hole, I hit another cracker that missed the trees by a few millimeters and flew long and straight to the fringe of the green. Again, full of myself, I proceeded to run my eagle putt 6-7 feet by and miss the come back putt. At that time, I was ready to dunk my whole head into the ball cleaner in the buggy. It’s a cool thing, it cleans your dirty balls. Golf balls, that is.

I scored a 38, that could have been a 36. Could have, would have should have. I’ve hit all except 2 fairways, 4 greens in regulations, drove the green at number nine and playing superbly. This was my day to break 80 and celebrate the milestone.

Back 9, I started with a par, and then it all unraveled. I started hooking, I started dunking my balls in the water, I started to three putt. As good as my front 9 was, I played like a cow on the back 9. At 42, it’s actually a good score, but here was my stats: 3 3-putts that could have got me pars, 0 fairways hit. Bogey after bogey, until I needed a birdie to break 80 on the index 2 last hole, a snaky par 5 at 520 meters. My drive borrowed fairway of the next hole, but I recovered to have a 10 foot try for birdie.

It turned at the last moment agonizingly and I settled for an 80, my best score ever, but like all golf scores, a story of missed opportunities. Every dog will have its day, and my day will come.

Conclusion

Damai Laut is really a nice course. That’s it. It’s not supposed to be a nice course. With so many awards, we were expecting this baby to break into the DAGTH category but instead, watched its stock fall lower and lower to a disappointing 60%. Will we play it again? Sure, if they transport the whole dang course to somewhere more accessible! For now, the staff will be stuck with their gerbils until the next batch of tourist golfers come by the resort.

The good: Easy drive from the resort; well conditioned fairways; interesting holes (9th, 13th); reachable par 5s and par 4s for one ons; able to get a crack at your best scores here due to forgiveness.

The bad: Hellish drive from anywhere else; service non existent, unless you are a gerbil; disappointing greens and rough; by far, the hole #15 is more disappointing than seeing the most beautiful girl in your high school turn into a pimply dumpling at the reunion.

The skinny: 24 of 40 divots (60%). We will definitely play again if we ever end up in Swiss Garden Resort, which is as much a certainty as seeing a pack of hyenas do a cha-cha with a herd of winged zebras that has a single horn on their head (why do they call it unicorn and not uniHorn?). Recommended only for resort folks on a holiday.


Damai Laut Scorecard

Damai Laut GCC Information

Address:

Damai Laut Golf & Country Club

Hala Damai 2, Jalan Damai Laut, Off Jalan Teluk Senangin,

32200 Lumut,

Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia.

Contact: +605-6859330

Fax: +605-6181018

Email: cm_dlgcc@swissgarden.com

Website: http://www.swissgarden.com/hotels/dlgcc/