IF I had money to burn and time to spare, Alta Vista Golf and Country Club’s View Tee will be the tournament I’d sign up for in a jiffy.
It sets you back P3,500, but you’d get a P7,000-golf bag plus a slew of other giveaways worth P3,000.
And you get 10 chances to win a car.
I’m not good at math but P3,500 for all of that? What are you waiting for?
Why is it called The View Tee? You have to get to Hole No. 14 to know. There is something in the view in that hole that takes your breath away, for a second or two.
I was there a few days ago with a bunch of yardage-challenged sportswriters and that day, we learned that the view in Hole 14 gives the tournament its name.
It’s breathtaking, spectacular. You name it.
And if you’d let your imagination wander a bit, which I did, you’d get a bird’s eye view of the SRP up there and you could have fun imagining Gwen the Giant and Tommy Oversized fighting over what up there looks like a drab piece of land.
And since it’s a member-guest tournament, I surely won’t mind pairing up with John Uy, the guy in charge of making sure the greens are green.
This septuagenarian has played all over Cebu and the country and is a member also of CCC and Club Filipino.
Since he’s in charge of making the grounds look good as new, playing with him will surely pay dividends as the men and women in charge of the grounds will make sure they are squeaky clean when the boss plays, right?
And clean Alta Vista really is. I only have one golf course to compare it with—Binitin—and, well, there’s no comparison.
Binitin hosted the PAL Interclub and there I could probably start a couple of bonfires with the dry leaves in each fairway, and another one on the green, which was partly brown.
In AVGCC, the greens are really green and the fairway doesn’t look like a neglected driveway.
Also, in your first four holes at AVGCC, you’d get more than your money’s worth of action.
In hole No. 1, a deep ravine divides the tee mound and the fairway,
If you miss your first tee shot, you get another one. Miss that again, and a local rule allows you to opt for a drop so you won’t spend the whole day trying to cross it.
By then you’re already hitting six and that’s just the first hole!
After a horrible Hole 1, you’d start thinking golf is for lunatics. Don’t. Because if you get lucky in Hole No. 2, you could be driving away a brand new car.
Whoever designed AVGCC sure loves to mess with the mind.
According to John, the first Par 3 is the golfer’s biggest chance for a hole-in-one. Then you get another easy Hole No. 3, before you got to Hole No. 4, which he called the most difficult.
I thought he was joking since it looked a whole lot easier than the first one and the pond doesn’t look as menacing as the ravine.
But when he pointed out how, even if you get past the pond, the margin for error for landing your shot is so low—the slopes are steep that even if you fly past the water, the ball will still roll down to the pond.
And that’s just the first four holes!
We tried getting past a pond that day and like I said, we were yardage-challenge.
There are blue tees (the farthest) for the Class A players, white tees (a bit closer) for the seniors and red (the nearest) for the ladies.
For our attempt, the red tees got moved, closer.
(mikelimpag@gmail.com)