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New Year’s Eve 2005 - Kantarat Golf Course

Oh the excitement! A game booked to be played at the fabled Kantarat Golf Course on the (narrow) land between the runways at Bangkok International Airport (BKK) on New Years Eve. The flights were booked for an 11am departure from gates 1 & 10 and the 33 players gathered in what looked like a departure lounge from a 1930’s black & white movie, but it was in fact the ‘club-house’!! The format of the day being a 2 person (being PC) scramble played in a stableford scoring system.. Part of the booking & sign-up process, was that we did have the option to make our own pairing, which most chose to do.

For those of you that have not played this course before (which included your scribe), here are a few pointers that will help you get through your day:

It is course owned and managed by the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF). Therefore, if any commissioned officer from the Thai military turns up to play with 5 of his mates and doesn’t have a booking, guess what, they get on & you wait!
Just because you have a ‘ticket’ & a departure time booked, does not always mean that you will be departing on time – a bit like flying with Air Asia.
Having a caddy fee paid for, doesn’t actually mean you get a caddy, but in our case you were more likely to get a cadet (more on that later).
Without stating the obvious it is quite noisy!! So if you are looking for an opportunity to have a chat with a mate, forget it.. unless of course you can outshout a Boeing 747 taking off within a pitching wedge distance of where you are standing…(A bit like being on the course with Mai….)
Allocate the WHOLE day… you don’t need a watch, a calendar will do.
Have Dave (Mr Rolls Royce Engines) Hill in your group and he can explain the power to weight ratios & reliability issues of each aircrafts engine..
Check your golf insurance to make sure you are covered just in case you lash a wild hooking drive over the OB & damage the paintwork of a jumbo…

So onto the fun…. Our ever so efficient Hon. Sec. Jack, checked us in & had us organised into our groups. We set off to the allocated departure gates with our boarding passes (green fees) in hand and were greeted by our in flight stewardess, which were in fact BOYS… It seemed that the course had run out of real caddy’s and had recruited cadets from the air force academy who didn’t know a driver from a pilot!! Those of us at departure gate 1 were lucky enough to get to know our caddies / cadets whilst we waited for 45 minutes for our delayed flight.. those on gate 10, departed on time….

Being a military course, as previously mentioned, this does entitle the residents to fly in what ever formations they choose and we were lucky enough to see an amazing & rarely spotted formation of 8 in a flight with 8 bag carrying sub-ordinates leaving from gate 1, closely followed by a slightly smaller and less rare formation of 6 & 6….This did set the tone for those of us departing in a northerly direction, as it was felt that our flights at 4 & 4 were just too small, so we upgraded into new formations of 6 + 6, which we hoped would enable us to slow down to the speed of the course… it worked… it was VERY slow…As a course it is quite a challenge for various reasons, some being more obvious than others. Its is tight & narrow course and when you read the local rules, you notice that holes 11 & 17 are the only ones without OB…plus the wind blows up & down the course, which means that the par 3, 2nd hole is a monster 220 yards INTO the wind…. and the 13^th is 236 yards par 3..

For those of you that have not played this course, you should try to experience it, at least once in your golfing life, twice might be too much but once is a must. To be so close to commercial aircraft the size of 747’s & Airbuses 340’s taking off & landing is a truly amazing sight (& sound) and in some way compensated for the extremely slow pace of play as well as a somewhat bland course, but then again you can’t have everything. It is a true test of your concentration to have on the east runway, a 747 landing with full reverse thrust engines only a 150 yards away, whilst on the west runway, a 4 engined airbus A340 is taking off… the noisy in almost ear splittingly loud… but then what did we expect, it is hardly Soi Dao!

After 6 hours of plane spotting, ball spotting, hole spotting, photograph taking and waiting on almost every shot, our last group (which included me) completed our flight having been fed & watered on fine RTAF cuisine and landed back at the arrivals hall. As expected, those who departed from gate 10, had a much shorter flight and were well into the cheap beer by the time we arrived.

So onto the prize giving in the executive business class lounge:

Winners: Mai & Mal with 46 points

Runners Up: Gareth & Murray with 42 pts

For all the results and the technical prize winners, have a look at the link with the ‘latest results’.

For those as sad as your scribe & if you have google earth on your computer, enter the following coordinates into the box (13.907444n 100.604115e ) and you will see a fantastic picture of the course.

Andy Flynn - Chairman

Dragon Slayers?

Our last monthly Stableford competition for 2005 and the first of the 2006 season found 33 Wanderers’ golfers venturing out of the ‘Kok and into the rollicking hills of Ratchaburi to take on the mythical Dragon Hills on December 18, 2005.

The course itself is a poorly manicured masterpiece of Mother Nature and, with a bit of baht and TLC, could be a world-class golf course. Due its inhospitable location, proper care and management are not at a premium, but that is also reflected in the moderate green fees. This time around, the greens were rather atrocious, and some looked as if they were GUR. Too bad if your approach shot landed on the wrong side and you had to putt off a planted doormat! Also, a course like this makes you realize how important it is to keep the ball in the fairway, because if you sprayed it left or right you were in the mighty jungle and in a big time way. This was a major reason why scoring on the day was so low.

Ratchaburi province is indeed a jovial jaunt out of the ‘Kok and we’ll set our sights on Royal Ratchaburi next time we’re out in them thar hills. Enough rhetoric; now on to the nitty gritty…

Supersonic moments of clubhouse glory belonged to these fierce and noble competitors:

Overall Winner: Tom Hopkins w/ 36 points

Flight A Winner: Marshall Elliot Sr. w/ 32 points

Flight A RU: Mark J. Grygiel w/ 32 points

Flight B Winner: Charles Cain w/ 29 points

Flight B RU: Mark Scheepers w/ 27 points

Flight C Winner: Diane Dube, w/ 32 points

Flight C RU: Matthew Jensen, w/ 31 points

MI: Dennis Thomack, w/ an 8-point comeback

LDM: Tom Hopkins,

LDL: Mai “Mini-Mouth” Pattanee

NP’s: Tom Hopkins, Paul Jensen, Diane Dube, and Rafael Croisetiere

Please join us in welcoming these three new members: Mr. Hakum Hedlund, Mr. Rafael Croisetiere and Mr. Markus Scharting.

See you at the Snake Links of Kantarat between the runways of Don Muang on New Year’s Eve and we’ll see if John Daly and Freddie Couples can scramble it up into a cup of Heineken heroics.

Mark J. Grygiel

General Committee Member