My golfing career.

2.5.2008.

I can hardly call it a career. If golf was a career, I would have starved long ago. Let's just say it's an interest that has lasted - until now, that is. 

I wasn't exactly into sports, of any kind, when in school, until I was accepted into a boarding school when in Form 4. At this particular school, sports were compulsory, and I had to pick up at least one. And that was it. 

When I started work after university, I was posted to a small town, and was introduced to tennis. I was given, literally, a junior "Slanger" tennis racquet that had a small break in the wooden frame that was tied with tennis gut, by one of my new office mates. When I moved job to KL I bought my own "Wilson" racquet, my first and last. I still have it somewhere. 

In 1978, I was transferred to Seremban. There I met my old senior at college, the late Dato' Ismail Mansor, who was the State Secretary, and therefore Deputy President of the Seremban International Golf Club. One day he called me to his office, asked me to fill up the SIGC application form he had with him, and endorsed it right there with the note that I'm permitted to pay the RM 250 entrance fee in two installments. Subsequently I was inducted as a member and continued to pay the RM 20 monthly subscription without ever owning a single golf club or stepping onto the golf course for 9 years.

In 1987, after joining Hamzah Pilus hitting balls at KGNS in the evening ( by then I was back in KL, and the traffic was not what it is now ), the both of us decided to get our handicaps at SIGC. I remeber I was tested by the Club Pro, Barrie Bluah of the then famous Bluah golfing brothers. It was then that I was totally hooked, so much so 36 holes on weekends became quite normal for a number of years. I have gone down to, at my lowest, handicap 6 a few years ago, and am playing a rather inconsistent 9 at the moment. Which is more than I can say for Hamzah, whom I last played with late last year,who's still happy with his 22. ( to be continued ).

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