It took a lot of hope over experience for me to sign up for the Hua Hin Golf Festival 2007 open tournament (first 150 players, no qualifications).But I got to the Royal Hua Hin Golf Club early in anticipation and looked for my group on the posted play list.

This was to be a “shot-gun” start, and my group of five players would start from the third hole. Rather than wait around, I took the shuttle golf cart out to the tee. My caddy had already arrived even though it was almost an hour before the official start. I killed time practicing some chip shots onto the elevated tee.

Presently, two Thai women who made up a part of our group arrived and went off to talk by themselves. Just before the start my other two playing partners, Martyn a Brit and Paul from Australia, arrived to complete our party.

I approached my first tee shot with some trepidation – I’m used to playing alone with only a caddy to watch me muff my shots. The two Thai players strode off to the ladies’ tee, 50 yards down the course. More than once my off-the-tee drive has fallen short of the ladies’ tee.

Still, my first drive was pretty respectable, and I started off down the fairway with a spring my feet. Maybe this was going to be alright. I remember it being a pretty good hole, and I was surprised later seeing my score card that the actual score was rather high.

After a few holes, however, I began to sense that this was not going to be one of my better days, even by my own low standards. True, I continued to get off a fairly good drive once and a while, but found it hard to put two or three good shots together. A seven on a par-3 hole didn’t help boost confidence, either.

It seemed as if the sixes turned into sevens and the sevens into eights. I automatically deferred honors to Paul and Martyn without inquiring about their scores. The day progressed, the shadows lengthened in the trees, the only sounds the metallic plonk of Martyn’s drives.

The last four holes were a kind of nightmare. I topped ball after ball, skittering it toward the hole 50 yards at a time so that I was already lying four or five by the time I got to the edge of the green. Holing out at the 18^th, I was more than ready to give up and head for the showers, but it being a staggered start, we still had two more holes to play.

I sloughed dispiritedly back to the clubhouse after holing out on the last green. “It’s a tough game,” said Paul. My caddy handed me my card, but glancing at the sevens, eights and nines, I didn’t have the energy to add them up and dropped the card in the score keepers’ box for them to figure and walked up stairs to the dinner.

My table companions, which included some long-stay foreign tourists, were pretty disparaging of the Royal Hua Hin Golf Course. The fairways are sparse and the greens like “brillo pad” complained Peter comparing it with some of the newer courses that are springing up around Hua Hin.

I was surprised to find myself offended by the remarks. I’ve come to think of the course as “my” course, and I take the criticism kind of personally. I love this course. I love its old-world feeling; I love the beautiful old-growth trees that line the fairways (even if I do spend a lot of time hacking my way out from under them).

I’m grateful for its total lack of water hazards, which has saved me plenty on lost balls. I love the bong bong of the Buddhist temple bells set in the foothills. I like to think that the monks are praying that I’ll get off a good tee shot. I need all the help I can get. And I like the history of the course.

The Royal Hua Hin Golf Course is indisputably old. It was the first golf course built in Thailand, and, if I understand the plaque in the restaurant, it is the oldest standard par-72 course in the world. It was laid out in the 1920s at a time when Thai royalty and the aristocracy were building summer places in Hua Hin.

King Prajadhipak (Rama VII) was teeing off on this very course in 1932 when a page ran up to him with the news that the generals had staged a coup d’etat in Bangkok overthrowing the absolute monarchy, one of the seminal events in modern Thai history. I don’t know if the King continued to play. That kind of news can put a guy off his game.

Objectively, I have to admit that my table partners have some fair complaints. The fairways are pretty greened up now because of all the rain we’ve had, but during the dry season much of the course turns a dead brown. Every now and then I trip over a lizard hole. “It’s what we call a goat track in Australia,” said Paul.

I asked my table companions to guess what they thought would be the winning score in the tournament. They speculated it would be a 73 or 74, or one or two strokes over par. In fact, a young Thai man won the trophy with a 71, or one under par.

After the dinner broke up I went looking for the final tally to see my standing. I found it, with my name at the very bottom, dead last, 150^th out of 150, with a final score of 134 (66/68). At least I learned my handicap – 35. I didn’t know they got that high.

I hefted my bag and trudged across the railroad tracks back to my bungalow - the goat returning from the goat track.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Hua Hin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.