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Thursday, December 30, 2004
Chiongbian: ‘Underboard’ worse than overboard
By Edgar R. Chiongbian
Teetime
HAPPY New Year! Actually, it is still two days away but we hope yours and ours will be a happy and prosperous one. By this time, you must already have decided what to do for the New Year; otherwise, you will get the same results as this past year. If you had a successful 2004, that might be good enough for you but if you didn’t, “same-same” will not make this a Happy New Year.
Question! Do we ever learn from our mistakes? Of course not! Do we admit when we make mistakes and do we ever render an apology? Never! These are the simplest ways that make life simple and easy to live yet it is so darn difficult to do.
Who knows why? Only The Shadow does.
For Christmas, my wife and I went to Guam on a golfing junket of our own. Our son Bill invited us and with the air tickets coming, off we went. PAL promised a direct flight from Cebu to Guam for October 2004, but that never materialized so to Manila we flew for a connecting flight.
Left Manila at 11:30 p.m. and arrived in Guam about 5 a.m. Guam is two hours ahead of us, which gave me at most an hour and a half of catnap. Had some breakfast and then to Talo-Fofo Golf course.
Nice course but not my score. No excuses but playing golf with eyes half-closed doesn’t work. Anyway, Bill’s score broke 100 and that was the highlight of our game.
Next day we went and played at the Leo Palace Resort golf club. This is the No.2 golf course in Guam. The No.1 is Mangilao that is built along the coastline like pebble beach with almost the same green fees at $150 sso that was taken out from our golfing destinations.
Leo Palace has 36 holes that are aptly divided into four nines per golf course designer, one of which is Arnold Palmer. Here at Leo Palace is where I found the most serious and meticulous monitoring of pace of play. At the first tee, the starter jots down the time you tee off and thereafter, at a time interval of 30-45 minutes, a marshal goes around and records the time and hole you are playing. At the tee house where the girls serve you drinks and sandwiches, they also jot down your time in and out.
And when you finish the front nine, your time is recorded and the whole process is repeated on the back nine. Nobody says anything to anyone, just a smile. I’m not sure what they do with the information but for sure I didn’t want to find out what they’d do if you took too much time. These guys look like bouncers who looks aptly ready to throw us out if we did something wrong.
I guess there is such a thing as going overboard but I think going “underboard” is worse, and that is what we have here in Cebu. What is a man to do? Just lick his wounds I suppose, if you know what I mean.
The following day we played the Talo-Fofo course again but this time with our golf buddies who came to Cebu for the President’s Cup in Danao. They are still talking about how much they enjoyed playing in that tournament and want to come back next year because of the hospitality we gave them.
On the final day of our golf marathon, we played with the same group at Alte Golf Club. Most of the golf courses in Guam and all the ones we played are mountain courses with some serious elevations and ravines. The most difficult is the Leo Palace Resort course. Four games in five days are wonderfully tiring. And if the 25th weren’t Christmas, it would have been 5-for-5.
GOLF TIP: The first goal when hitting a shot from a fairway bunker is to clear the lip of the bunker. And because you will usually catch the ball at the bottom of the clubface, the ball will come out lower. Make sure you consider this in selecting your club.
For longer fairway bunker shots, the new hybrid clubs are very ideal to use. Their broader soles won’t dig into the sand and prevent fat shots. Fairway woods with high lofts are also good to use and definitely better than using long irons.
The proper shot in a fairway bunker is to hit the ball before the sand to avoid fat shots but with these clubs, you can get away with hitting the shot somewhat fat if you open the face and aim slightly left. The club will square up and skid through the sand rather than dig.
(erc@skyinet.net)
(December 30, 2004 issue)
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