Golf Camaraderie...

In my first post when I started blogging last year, I commented on how addictive golf was for me despite having started to play the game quite late in my life. I used to feel very intimidated when I played with other people as I was very conscious of how bad my game was and quite often I played alone in the middle of the day when I was sure that no one else would be playing at the course.

As I became better at my game I became more comfortable to play with others and discovered the joys of golf camaraderie.

I have met and made friends with many new people at the golf clubs where I belong and have also made friends from other clubs locally and overseas whenever I had the opportunity to play for my club against these clubs in interclub and interport matches.

Last week I was fortunate to have been asked to accommodate Mr Alastair Anderson, a lawyer from Perth in Scotland, who was on holiday in Malaysia and had walked-in to our club for a game of golf. As I was playing three-ball that morning with Mr Hyder Ali and Mr Zaid Ibrahim, we were more than happy to have Alastair join our flight.

Alastair's father-in-law, Mr A E Brown, was a member of the RSGC way back in the seventies when he was a research scientist with the Rubber Research Institute (RRI). In fact Mr A E Brown's name is engraved on one of the boards of the club's dining room, having won one of the many annual competitions held at the club.

Alastair is quite a fanatic golfer himself, I suppose not much different from pakdokter. He had made the stop in Kuala Lumpur after having spent a week golfing daily in Pattaya. He told me that he had signed up to become a member of the Pattaya Golf Society, and every morning he would go to a designated pub in downtown Pattaya where he would sign up with 20 or so other golfers and moved on from there for a mini-golf tournament at one of the many golf courses in Pattaya. And all this for just 600 baht a game!

Alastair invited and offerred to host pakdokter for golf games at his home clubs in Perth should pakdokter make it to Scotland some time in the future. Pakdokter would certainly look up Alastair if and when the opportunity arises....

Alastair at the tee at the par-3 hole No. 4 Old Course of the RSGC...

The same week pakdokter also had the opportunity to play with one Mr Gowraf, a 28 year old Indian national from Chennai who was also in Kuala Lumpur on a holiday. Gowraf plays to a handicap of 2 and is a regular in the Indian Professional Tour. He started playing golf when he was 10 and will probably soon be in the same ranks as the other internationally established Indian professional golfers like Arjun Atwal, Jyothi Rhandawa etc.

It was such a pleasure to play with such a good player and how easy he made it look to play regulation on in most of the holes.