Here are suggestions for our golf beginners who are looking forward to play in their first fairway. Article by Dr. Vince Gomez.
In our first installment of Where to Play for the beginning golfer, we featured what we felt to be the easiest courses to play in Metro Manila, one in the North (Veteran’s) and one in the South (Philippine Navy). These courses allow one to practice everything from drives to pinpoint approaches to playing out of trouble to greens of varying difficulty, yet not frustrating the golfer too much (and not losing too many balls). For our next installment, we are featuring two courses that can be played relatively quickly, are located in the heart of the metropolis but are more challenging in that one’s game must include the ability to carry the ball over hazards and play to smaller greens. These are the two Army courses: Camp Aguinaldo along EDSA and Kagitingan located inside Fort Bonifacio.
AGUINALDO GOLF CLUB
Location: This is inside Camp Aguinaldo right on EDSA between Greenhills and Cubao. You enter through gate 6 on Santolan Ave. (Boni Serrano) and wind your way through the camp (unless they are on red alert).
Features: This is a tiny course that weaves around the homes, offices and buildings of Camp Aguinaldo. It may be short but almost all our local pros and superstars learned the game there. Most of the holes are par 3s which means there is a lot of waiting when the course is busy. All the par 5s are short and big hitters can get on them in two but the beginner will play it true to par. The fairways are very tight and separated by thin walls of trees that allow wayward shots to cross over easily so be on guard and keep your ears open for “FOREâ€
“A course made even more beautiful over time.”
The history of Baguio Country Club (BCC) is inextricably linked to the history of the city in the clouds. When William Howard Taft was tasked with governing the Philippine Islands, he directed his friend, William Cameron Forbes, to look for a cool place in the Sierra Madre Mountains, of which he had heard rumors. You see, Taft was a large man who found the heat and humidity of the tropics too much for his corpulence. He longed for the cool temperate climes of the Northeastern United States and was determined to find such a place in the Islands.
It was this determination that saw the building of the Benguet Road and the subsequent establishment of the City of Baguio. Of course, once there, there had to be something to do for those who made the trek up the winding mountain road. To that end, Forbes tapped his associate, Dallas McGrew, to start a club. The founding members, including Forbes and McGrew, established BCC in 1905 and circulated the prospectus for membership the next year. For a fifty-peso initiation fee and a twenty-peso annual fee, one could avail of membership, provided, of course, he met the social criteria.
The club wasted no time and purchased 32 hectares of suitable land from Mateo Cariño, an Igorot chief who also owned the land on which Club John Hay now sits, for the princely sum of Php 2,400. The first clubhouse was little more than a large hut with a thatched roof; it was built in one day for Php 400. The club’s first facilities were two tennis courts, croquet grounds, and a three-hole golf course. In 1907, Major Gallagher of the US Army, Mr. Marshall of International Bank, and Mang Dangal from the Manila Club were retained by Forbes to lay out anew the golf course. And on March 25, 1908 the club began serving food to its patronsâ€
