The Staroba Medan Masters 2009 (1)...The Royal Sumatra Golf and Country Club..

Pakdokter returned home from Tokyo on Monday April 20th and managed to play in the RSGC Tun Hussein Onn Competition which was based on a bogey-play format. Although pakdokter did not win any of the top positions, pakdokter managed to make a small amount of money in the individual game against pakdokter's flight mate who played to a handicap of 14.

The Wednesday after that weekend pakdokter and 26 other golfers left for Indonesia to play in the SGC ( Staroba Golf Club) Medan Masters 2009. The SGC is the golf club of the alumni of pakdokter's high school .

The SGC had made a tour of Medan in August 2008 but being a rather rainy season then, we had to deal with heavy rain on the days of our games. This trip was originally decided upon by pakdokter and pakAli Ariffin as part of our planned monthly golf tour under the umbrella of the SIGC ( the Staroba International Golf Club) but as the number of participants exceeded the minimum of 12, this event was immediately sanctioned by the SGC as one of its official event for this calendar year. And we had 31 confirmed golfers until the last week when a flight of 4 golfers from Perak had to withdraw for some urgent matters.

The first day game was played at the Royal Sumatra Golf Club. When we were here last year the clubhouse was still under construction and we were promised that the clubhouse would be ready this year. As evidenced by the above picture, the clubhouse remained uncompleted and looked unlikely to be completed soon, what more with the current economic crisis which has affected Indonesia as badly as everywhere else.

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About half of the entourage flew in on Airasia which arrived early morning and were shuttled immediately to the club. The remaining half which flew MH arrived about one hour later and had a later start of their game.

Despite the sad condition of the makeshift clubhouse, we were rewarded by a great golf course which was a pleasure to play. Playing from the blue tee, the course measured a total of 6018 metres.

As the course was relatively empty, pakdokter and the other 2 flightmates in the third group decided to start from the 2nd Nine, which was the more difficult Nine of the course. Pakdokter played with long-time rival pakAli Ariffin and a junior, pakFakhrunnasri, who was a first-timer to the SGC Overseas Tour

Due to the early morning flight and lack of sleep from staying up to watch the Barcelona-Chelsea game in the UEFA Cup semi-finals, pakdokter could not concentrate on the game very well. As a result pakAli Ariffin, who decided that we play a match-play game for every hole with a 50,000 rupiah award for the outright winner of the hole started scalping both pakdokter and pakFakhrunnasri right from the start.

Poor pakFakhrunnasri.....although he is a stronger and better player than both of us, he must have been intimidated by the cool and collected senior gentlemen. Nothing worked for him that day and he ended up being the biggest loser. Pakdokter returned a score of 55 for the 2nd Nine but started out well in the 1st Nine with a birdie on the 1st hole. This was followed by several bogeys and 2 more pars which probably affected pakAli's confidence. In the end pakdokter returned a score of 48 for the 1st Nine, good enough to win the 3rd best ball-sweep award for that Nine.

And the caddies, at least pakdokter can say so for his caddy, were good with their reading of the putting lines.

We had lunch at the clubhouse and their 'sup buntut' was a favourite amongst most of us. We checked into our hotel Emerald Garden in downtown Medan and went for a delicious "nasi padang' dinner at a nearby restaurant. Pakdokter took an early night to be better prepared for the second game.