Tucked away in a cheap apartment on the 27th floor of a Jakarta skyscraper, I’m having trouble deciding on what to write. Originally I started this blog to inform, amuse and educate people about the game of golf, the mind games it presents me with and then combining that with the amazing cultures I get to be a part of. I also happened to be in Asia eating wonderful exotic food and mixing with the locals so I enjoyed referencing that too. However as we know the mind can be amazing but also annoying and I soon find myself just wanting to write about the parts that didn’t go well during my tournaments rather than getting into the interesting parts. This isn’t supposed to be a place where I can vent. It is supposed to be a place where I can show you the culture, the challenges and the rewards of a touring professional golfer. So, this time I’m going back to that plan and I will try to give you an insight in playing golf at Gunung Geulis in Bogor, Indonesia.
To begin with gunung means beautiful and geulis means mountain. So what’s golf like there? Well one thing for sure is it’s definitely hilly! So hilly that for only the second time in my career as a pro we had to use golf carts during the event. The rules stipulated that we could only ride between holes and also on numbers 1,5,8 and 14. Hole number one is straight down a mountain and played approximately 50 yards downhill from the tee to green. What that means is that when you get your distance to the target, you need to adjust it for the downhill. So my first shot off the tee was 240 minus 25 and my second shot into the green was 130 minus 25. Basic maths but this is how most of the professionals do it in order to have good distance control. The idea is that you come up with an adjusted number that you think the ball needs to go, to get the target. Growing up playing my golf at Sheringham on the cliff top means that this side of the game to me is normally pretty easy. Sheringham members regularly face uphill and downhill shots. For those of you that have played the 6thhole there, that hole only plays 10 yards downhill. So comparatively it is an easy adjustment compared to the first at Gunung Geulis!
The slope adjustments there are not the only problem, in fact the real fun starts when you get on the greens. For the first time in a while I managed to putt off a green twice and sometimes I was made to look a fool with my reads. For those that don’t play golf a “read” is the line that we visualise the ball rolling on to end up in the hole. We normally take into consideration the slope and the speed but in some cases we have to also look at the “grain”. This is the direction that the grass grows and out here in Asia it has a big influence on the read. In some instances you may see the ball rolling to the hole sloping from right to left, and then the grain is actually going up the hill. So the ball is affected by this and doesn’t move as much as it should and in some cases the ball defies gravity and moves uphill. It also affects the speed. Putting down grain is fast and into the grain is slow. Not that I did, but if you’re not switched on and focused you can easily miss a 2 foot putt because of the grain, and as I said earlier if it is down-grain and downhill you could find yourself chipping for your next shot!
The tournament was quite frustrating for me finishing in 36th place but that was the best I could do there. I think I had a good score going in every round but the golf course always stung me at some point. Most tournaments come down to small moments, inches and sometimes a bit of luck and despite these factors not quite going my way at various points in the rounds I was still able to compete. I enjoyed my time at the “beautiful mountain” and I will take the positives into the next event back in the city of Jakarta.