The day

The attractions of the lovely and challenging Riverside course wove its usual spell in inducing the long absent to  pop out of the woodwork. Graham Barber we have not seen for over a year, and therefore easily recognised by his much outdated Tee Set shirt, though Goetz Ebbecke takes the prize this week for the longest returnee with 71 weeks between rounds.

Who knows what Goetz handicap was 71 weeks ago but whatever it was its now very much out of date. Dale Mathews has been noticeable only by his absence of all of 31 weeks and found the lovely Riverside caddies too much of a temptation to pass up – not to mention the bottle of double black Bags had promised to bring to the 19^th hole.

Newcomers were also a’plenty with 5 virgins introduced to the joys of drinking during golf and cross dressing after the game. Hope to see you next week Tony, Teddy, Stuart, Shannon and Graham. Welcome to Tee Set.

All going to plan with Riverside looking in its most delightful condition, an empty car park due to Ramadan and lovely temperate weather for golf. But, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, a Big Bird bus pulled up with 40 Japanese golfers piling out in search of a SNAFU.

With 44 golfers of our own it came down to who was willing to tip the starter the most but before we knew it Geoff Thwaites had waved a red back and Tee Set had tee boxes 9 to 13 for a mini shot-gun start. And then the chaos really started though despite the hiccups there were no complaints so we guess everyone must have enjoyed the day 🙂

A mention for the Web Guy who did all the registrations and groupings during the week but pulled a muscle getting out of bed and found himself unable to get to the first tee box unassisted. The responsibility for making sure the data base got to secretary Brenda therefore fell on Santi Pies shoulders, a Santi who was to do a magnificent job assisting Brenda, magnificent that is apart from forgetting to bring the Tee Set bags, which explains why 9 skirt earners were holding up a table-cloth and looking like a clothes line today!

Apart from the lovely caddies, amongst the greatest attractions of Riverside are the stories that people invariably have to tell back at the 19^th tee box. Snakes crossing one’s line, bunkers from hell (where do they get this sand from?) blow-out holes that players are actually proud of because they can remember every humbling strokes and improvements of 22 shots, which is not a Tee Set record by the way as Shaun Berg prior to the Web Guy keeping traceable records hit 64 and 39 at Kemayoran on his very first round with Tee Set. The biggest surprise was that Shaub showed up the following week to have another go. Now that’s real Tee Set grit.

The play

Riverside is of course not a course for the faint of heart with challenges everywhere and higher than average scores were to be the order of the day.

Anlo’s net 76 was good enough to win Low Net – A Grade, though James Ross had one of his “good days” to take Low Net B Grade while a 72 secured Low Net – C Grade for a Leona who seldom misses a prize!

Rasmus Kilder doesn’t have a handicap yet but that is not stopping him regularly taking a red one for Low Gross of course. We imagine he has played his 5 rounds by now so will be challenging for A-Grade honours in the near future, though the ways of the USGA Handicapping system will ensure he gets a tough initial handicap 🙂

An excellent 28 putts on tricky greens made it a happy Welcome Back for Steve Harper while Santi Miller’s 1st Sandy at her second hole made up for a number of near-misses in other categories.

David “Bags” Baglivo is a quality player and reigning Tee Set Matchplay Champion of course and therefore not given to running up high scores, so it was more than a little surprising to see him “winning” Most Strokes today. So surprising in fact that we encouraged him to give us some insight into his feat, something which he was to do straight away, and with candour, as follows;

” It was one of those moments. I pushed my tee shot off the 7th (penalty) dropped and hit my next beautiful shot out left about 150m so instead of dropping up the fairway, the Tin Cup movie popped into my head and I dropped again, out again, dropped again, out again, now I decided to drop up the fairway, because obviously this wasn’t working, so drop then hit a nice shot in, a little long, and it bounced into the water, drop again, chip long and 3 putt or something like that, by that time I needed some sort of liquid to cool down, actually I could have used it 5 shots earlier.” 

Tears in eyes, thanks for sharing Bags, I guess we have all been there!

Another very decent player is of course Fernando “El Guapo” Gaggino and a 61-39-100 saw him take Most Improved with a record equalling 22 improvement on his back nine. His explanation was the rather less involved “I had trouble in the bunkers ….” though your scribe, who wasn’t even there but does know Guapo well enough, suspects a good Saturday night had to have been involved in it somewhere.

A healthy 9 cross-dressers to report this week, though their apparel of choice was to make them resemble a washing line rather more than the effete pink Tiller Girls look they usually favour. But that is another story, however, never mind, there were rather more smiles today than before – perhaps as a result.

More detailed player by player results here – and more photos on the Tee Set Gallery.

Next up

Our Ramadan swing around some of the greatest courses in the Jakarta area continues next Sunday, this time with a visit to the superb Jack Nicklaus designed Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) course down at the end of the Serpong Tol. We have played BSD just once before as Tee Set and were well impressed; impressed enough in fact for us to open up negotiations to have it as our Monthly Medal home, however, we were never able to meet on price and went to Imperial instead, though that was something short of an unmitigated disaster.

Tee off from 1 & 10 at 11:42 with Green Fees of 845,000 including shared cart.

Sign up here for more fun in the sun at one of the crown jewels of Jakarta golf.

The playing schedule has been updated to reflect the current situation as we see it for the rest of the year. Some great stuff in there – very far from least being Tee Set’s first ever go at a combined Z-course and 9 holes of the Old Course at Jagorawi on the 2nd August. Don’t miss that one, put it in your diary. NOW.

The other major schedule development is that Imperial have agreed to extend our agreement by a further six months and, as Imperial was the overwhelming choice of Tee Setters in our recent poll, that is great news.

See ya at BSD!! …. Tee Set

PS what the FPOAE noted above about “traceable” records is true of course, they only exist from the 1st January 2012 for the most part, with those for the previous 28 years existing only in the fevered imaginations of our older members. If, however, at least one other Tee Set member in good standing is able to vouch for Shaun Berg hitting 64-39-103 at Kemayoran way back when, then the Web Guy in willing to add it to recorded history. An approximate date would be helpful too.