pakdoktergolfblog: The Castle Golf Club at Rathfanham, Dublin

Monday, 1st August 2011

The Castle Golf Club has a reciprocal arrangement with pakdokter's golf club in Kuala Lumpur, the RSGC. Pakdokter and travelling buddy, pakZahardin, has instructed the sports executive at our club to make a booking for us to play there and we were given a tee-off time for 11 am that Monday morning. First stop was to the Avis Rent-a-Car office to collect our Ford Mondeo which would be our transport for the next week or so. And Dean O'Malley's brother-in-law, Tim had also loaned us his SatNav - a GPS gadget to help us get around the city and the rest of our driving tour. With the help of the GPS, we managed to arrive at the Castle Golf Club well before our alloted tee-off time.

That Monday happened to be a public holiday - a Bank Holiday. And the Castle Golf Club was having its annual Bank Holiday Tournament that day. Pakdokter first thought that it was really nice of the club to have accomodated us on what pakdokter presumed would be a very busy day at the golf course. Little did pakdokter realised until we registered ( with a participation fee of 15 Euros for the two of us) that we had been included to participate in the competition. Pakdokter was registered as Mr Mann ( pakdokter told pakZahardin that it was because the Sports Manager must have thought that pakdokter was related to Mr Thomas Mann...) and pakZahardin was registered as Mr Dean ( not related to James Dean though enough to have earned him his new call-name, Mr Dean O'Malley...).

We were paired to play with a father and son team of Mr Frank diMarco and Mr Paul diMarco. Frank is a very senior golfer in his late 70's if not early 80's and despite his multiple medical problems which included a 'stroke' a year or two ago, he still played great golf. His son, Paul, played to a handicap in the low teens and hit strong and long. Only his tendency to hit wild had prevented him from playing to a single-handicap.

The competition was played on a 4-ball-best-ball stableford format. Both pakdokter and Dean O'Malley were too ashamed to declare our real handicap so to 'elak malu' we both declared our handicaps as 21! At the end of the day we did not play too bad - we both managed to come home with a total of 32 points. Frank and his son, Paul collected 40 points. we thought they would have won but the winning pair came home with 47 points playing to handicaps of 3 and 7.

The Castle Golf Club is a walking course. It is mostly flat and in many ways resembled our very own RSGC. The whole golf course is located within the grounds of the old Ranfanham Castle - thus giving it the name and from pakdokter's reading of the few books acquired in Dublin, the area was also the site of fierce fighting during the Uprising. Apart from Mr Frank di Marco who rode the buggy in view of his physical limitation, pakdokter noticed that many ladies who looked very much into their 70's or 80's were all walking and pulling their full-sized golf bag. And pakdokter and Mr Dean O'Malley only brought a long a half-set bag with 7 clubs each. Maluuu..