Edisi 1 Staroba-Koba Invitation 2012 - Day 1 @ Cengkareng

The Koba Invitation 2012 kicked off its Edisi 1 immediately a day after pakdokter finished playing with the RSGC Sunday Buayas in Jakarta. As reported earlier, pakdokter stayed on in Jakarta and checked in at the Millenium Sirih Hotel at almost midnight on Saturday after dining out at the Turkuaz Turkish Restaurant with pakRosliKkhan and Ibu Linza and their friends. Most of the STAROBA golfers had already checked in earlier. A few more were arriving on Sunday morning.

STAROBA came with a contingent of 22 golfers - the extras being reserve players in case of any team member falling ill on any of the days - this strategy decided upon to improve its chances of beating KOBA in the competition. KOBA had in its previous outings relied on its reserved players who replaced players who did not perform well in earlier rounds. That gave them, we think, the better odds at beating STAROBA in 3 out of the 5 outings.

Some new faces were brought in to represent STAROBA - one of them was pakdokter's dormitory mate of many years at the Blue House of STAR - Tuan Haji Yusof Abdullah - who hailed from Terengganu.

KOBA, which usually came with a contingent of 25 to 26 golfers, did not even manage to get a team of 20 golfers. Many of their engineers and managers from their tin mines in several islands off Sumatera were held up at home due to work problems. So in the end only 16 players from each team played in the competition on Day 1. The rest played for individual day prizes only.

Zulkifli Rauf and Tuan Hj Yusof Abdullah

Tuan Hj Yusof was 1 year pakdokter's 'junior'....
as usual the golfers had a pre-golf massage and stretching
before the match at Cengkareng
pakMazlan Salleh flew in from Kucing to play for Staroba

for some reason this picutre came out 'misty'
Tuan Hj Yusof in front and in the back row
Mihdzor, Rahman Din and Zulkifli Rauf

Pakdokter was again paired with pakTgAzman to play against our perpetual opponents - pakMesha and pakErik. PakTgAzman had borrowed his cousin's new TaylorMade driver as he had been hitting longer and straighter with this equipment when he tried out at home. Pakdokter had taken over the driver from pakTgFarith who played with the RSGC Sunday Buayas the past few days and handed it over to pakTgAzman. Naturally, pakdokter was banking on pakTgAzman to carry the game for our pair but alas, pakTgAzman was a bit of a disappointment. Probably due to his overeagerness - he hit wild quite a lot - and we could not match pakErik who played well and carried his pair to victory against us.

Luckily for us, the other pairs played well and STAROBA led KOBA on the 1st Day 4.5 points to 3.5 points.