Wednesday, 24 April 2013

25.4.13 - What do you do with a spare piece of land next to an airport?

In the UK you would probably do something sensible: parking; a low-rise budget hotel. In HK, you build a golf club entirely from scratch, of course!
A fellow golf-playing expat, Nigel, texted me within hours of hearing that our stuff had turned up to ask if I fancied cracking open the golfing gear. Well, I thought, I do need to live up the guy tai hash name…what better way to do that than tootle off for 18 holes in the midweek, just as everyone else is commuting to work?
And so, I found myself waiting for a lift from Nigel under the HSBC tower, golf bag on shoulder, as bankers and office workers swarmed around me.  A pleasing contrast.
Due to some fussy rules on who can play at the larger golf courses, we were essentially forced to go to the more lax airport course. However, I had in any case been nursing a wish to see the ‘Sky City’ course since we’d got here.
It didn’t disappoint. A short course, very well put together, full of bunkers for my liking, immaculately kept for the most part by an army of groundsmen/women.
But the highlight of course was the strangeness of playing accompanied by the sight and deafening sound of huge passenger jets lumbering straight over the course every 3 minutes.
The piece de resistance of crazy is to come. See the grey metal poles? Those are floodlight pylons. Why allow the pesky sun to limit golfing hours? The whole Sky City course is floodlit. So you can keep playing at night.

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