Iloilo Golf and Country Club: The oldest existing golf course in asia.

AFTER THE UNITED STATES TOOK OVER THE PHILIPPINES in 1901, the new regime inaugurated a raft of development programs. Among these was infrastructure building to support to hasten economic growth. The U.S. Congress approved in 1905 the construction of railroads all over the archipelago. In Panay the task fell on Scottish and British engineers. But beyond building what they had been commissioned for, they built something else—a golf course. Not just any kind of golf course, but one that echoed the dramatic dunes of Scottish links.

How did they do it? They wanted the course in Iloilo City, where they were based, perhaps somewhere around the scenic harbor. Trouble was that area was flat and prone to flooding. After searching high and low for the ideal site, they finally found it along the railroad route in the rural town of Santa Barbara, a few kilometers north of Iloilo City. Spread before them was a tranquil, verdant, undulating terrain; they couldn’t ask for more.

Immediately they bought a few hectares from landowners, who probably wondered what these foreigners were up to. As immediately they went work on their dream playground. It wasn’t easy. Some of the trees had to go to make way for the greens and fairways. But the natives refused to cut them down, believing they were enchanted. It took a bit of convincing before the Scots and Brits got their workers’ cooperation. Eventually, with nothing much more then crude hardware, they carved out what they didn’t know then would be a legacy in the annals of Philippine golf.

The original course was a short nine-hole layout of about 2,000 yards with two par 3s and seven par 4s. Legend has it that the first hole-in-one was made by one of the founding fathers, a certain Mr. Houston. This claim, however, was later nullified by his fore-caddie’s admission that in his eagerness to please his employer he perpetrated the lie with his bare foot. With a furtive kick, Houston’s ball, which had come to rest on a crest, rolled toward the green and into the cup for an unprecedented hole-in-one.

To get to the course, golfers took the train from Iloilo to Santa Barbara. What a sight they must have cut in the sleepy town, dressed in knee breeches, tall hats and long tailed coats—the golf finery of the day. On some days, they rented bull carts to take them from the railway to the course; otherwise it was a two-kilometer trek with their golf clubs over rough country trails. In the afternoon, they took the last train back to the city, often running over the muddy trails to catch their ride. The new golf course attracted other foreigners, mostly Americans who, were just as fascinated with the game then gaining following in the United States.

The 13 original Scot and British builders of the course organized and incorporated the Santa Barbara Golf and Country Club around 1913. They affiliated with the Royal and Ancient (R & A) of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, the governing body then and now of all of golf. It was because of this relationship that the Club followed the rules of the R & A, even as the rest of the country’s golf clubs were governed by the rules of the United States Golf Association (USGA). This continued until the late 1950s, when the Philippine Amateur Golf Association (PAGA), forerunner of the Republic of the Philippines Golf Association (RPGA), was organized and required all golf clubs in the country to affiliate with the Association and follow a uniform Rule of Golf patterned after the USGA.

The old Club House.

The Club had a distinctly international flavor. British and Americans, who had businesses in lumber, commodities trading and stevedoring on Panay, made up the bulk of the membership, a premium. No Filipino was allowed into the exclusive circle.

To accommodate a growing membership, the original bamboo clubhouse was replaced by a bigger, more permanent structure built to the left of what is now the 18th green. It had a raised terrace overlooking the finishing hole, a bar, naturally, and changing rooms for the gentlemen from where ladies and minors were restricted. A small stairway led to a covered upper deck that yielded a bird’s-eye view of the golf course. Gas lamps lit the place and water was hand-carried by villagers and stored in tanks.

During the presidency of one Colonel Frank Hodsall in 1920, membership numbered around 50, with as many caddies. The Club produced excellent golfers so adept with their hickory shafted clubs that they earned glory and respect for the Club whenever they represented it in tournaments held in and around Manila. An outstanding Iloilo golfer of the time and one who won the hearts of fellow competitors and spectators was one G. Marsaille. Of French heritage, Monsieur Marsaille had only one arm.

Belonging to a golf club became a social status among well-heeled Filipinos living in Manila and the major provinces. Being barred from the Santa Barbara Golf and Country Club, the Ilonggos built their own golf course, a short nine-hole layout on property owned by the Avanceñas in Polo, Arevalo, thus it was named the Polo Golf Club. Not much more is known about it as it didn’t survive World War II.

THE SANTA BARBARA GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB remained a bastion of foreign expatriates until the presidency of one Mr. Greenbaum in the late 1920s. This was a time when wealthy, landed Filipinos gained entry into the Club. Among them were Mariano Cacho, Oscar Ledesma, Tomas Confesor, W. Gemperle and the brothers Eugenio and Fernando Lopez. As more Filipinos got involved in government and business with the creation of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, Iloilo’s mestizo elite further acquired economic power.

More Filipinos joined the Santa Barbara Golf and County Club. As a result, despite par 5 being extended earlier and the continued exclusion of women and minors, the steadily growing membership overcrowded the Club’s course, especially on Wednesdays and weekends, the golfing days. A 3,350-yard, par 36, nine-hole course was built. This is believed to be the handiwork of E. Black, who could also be designer and builder the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club’s East and West courses in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila. Wack Wack’s records, however, names the builder to be a James or Jim Black.

Tee mount over-viewing the expanse of hole no. 1

By now, Santa Barbara Golf and County Club had become a veritable cradle of golf, popular not just in the Visayas but also in Manila. From the ranks of its caddies, who were well schooled in the rudiments and conduct of the game, sprang caddie masters and grounds keepers whose services were sought by other golf clubs, especially those in Manila. Names such as Siodina, Nadales, Rates, Pinet, Sinfuego and other Illonggo professionals are all products of Santa Barbara.

New Club House. 2000.

Holding the distinction as one of the premier golf courses in the Philippines, Santa Barbara played host to the great golf names of the era. Renowned American and British pros, such as Gene Sarazen and Jug McSpadden, made it a point to play Sta. Barbara whenever they were in the Philippines. Here they met, played and were soundly beaten at their own game by the Club’s pride—Miguel Sequito. Small and skinny, Sequito played the game unshod, confounding newcomers. Sarazen, in particular, was astounded at his play and the two became lifelong friends.

Sequito started at Santa Barbara in 1913 as a ball boy and was paid ten centavos day. He earned twice as much as a caddie by the time he was 12. At 15 he was the caddie master. During his 69 years of service to the Club he was also a locker room attendant, clerk, collector, cook, superintendent and golf instructor.

Restricted by Club policy, Miguel and the other caddies could play only on moonlit nights, using their intimate knowledge of the golf course to drive the ball to the target. This was how Sequito honed his skills to perfection. Even more amazing is that he accomplished all this with an old, half –faced, wooden driver handed down by a member.

At the 1935 Philippine Open at Wack Wack Golf Club in Mandaluyong, Miguel Sequito led the field after three days of play against the likes of Australian golfing legend Norman Von Nida and the great Filipino champion Larry Montes. He faltered in the final round because his feet were blistered from wearing shoes for the first time. Wack Wack shunned barefoot players. Sequito continued to represent Santa Barbara Golf and Country Club proudly and with great dignity in many Philippine opens. His memory is forever enshrined in the annals of the Club.

That fabulous era of carefree country club life with its lively Saturday night big band parties ended when the Pacific War reached the Philippines in December 1941. The Santa Barbara clubhouse was used by the USAFFE for the duration of the war until it was overrun and burned down by the Japanese. Mercifully, the golf course wasn’t seriously damage, though low lying gullies were converted into rice fields by the caddies to support their families. Almost all records were destroyed or lost, save for a precious few that were preserved by some members and faithful employees.

When the American liberation forces arrived in Iloilo, they used the course as their campsite. Hundreds of tents lined what are now the 14th and 15th holes, while tanks mowed down the lush grass. Concrete floorings for officers’ quarters were laid out along the fairways, further defacing the golf course.

After the war, some of the expatriates returned to Iloilo and together with Club members and golfers from the now destroyed Polo Golf Club reorganized the Club, christening it Iloilo Golf and Country Club. A nipa hut was again built on the site of the old clubhouse. What little money there was went to the purchase of surplus war equipment for restoring the golf course.

Water hazard at tee mount of hole #11.

It took well over a year just to bring the course to playable condition. For lack of space at the makeshift clubhouse, house committee chair Joe Pickrich used the trunk of his car as a mobile bar, which ran on honor system. The members served themselves and listed down what they consumed. Everybody hoped that honor among men would not be forgotten when one had one too many.

The first postwar president was Wallace McGregor Davies Sr. from the trading house of Strachan and McMurray. In 1949 Vicente Arenas became the first Filipino to serve as president of the Club. (As was the custom, the position of vice president was reserved for a foreigner since expats still comprised more than half of the membership.) Arenas was followed by Carlos Jalandoni, Sr. (1951), Jose E. Locsin (1953), Ignacio Salazar (1955), Francisco Jison (1957), Francisco Q. Maravilla (1959) and Juan M. Cacho (1961). Jalandoni was reelected in 1963 and alternated as president and chairman emeritus until his death in1997.

In 1947 a more permanent clubhouse was built on its present site, a better choice, being out of the line of fire of poorly struck golf shots aimed at the adjacent green. An army Quonset hut, costing a princely P500, was installed atop another structure by architect and member T.S. Zafiro Ledesma. During Locsin’s term, a concrete annex was added to the Quonset hut. The upper floor served as the social hall and the ground floor as the bar and refreshment area. The locker and shower rooms were renovated and a terrace was added.

The postwar boom fuelled the rapid growth of the game’s popularity. Numerous competitions, such as the now-defunct Alunan Cup, were regularly held with rival clubs in Negros. Annual national tournaments, such as the Fil-Am in Baguio, added to the prestige of the champion clubs. The Iloilo Golf Club held its own monthly tournaments and the annual match-play Calcutta (is this correct?) sponsored by Dewar’s Whiskey. The Club Championships have been conducted annually since the 1930s.

A second low point in the club’s history occurred during the height of the Hukbalahap movement (1951-52), when the danger of the insurgency all but put an end to the social activities of the club. The few who continued to play did so early in the morning or left well before dark as a precaution. Nothing untoward ever happened, though. It seems that one of the leaders of the Huks, a certain Patrimonio, was a tenant of Paco Maravilla; that’s why the Huks tolerated the golfers.

Maravilla oversaw major renovations on the course undertaken during Jison’s term. Hundreds of trees were planted or replaced, tees were moved back and the greens were improved. Putting surfaces were overlain with a better carpet grass of the Zoysia variety obtained from the Manila Golf Club.

As Club president in 1958, Maravilla got the board’s approval to expand the nine-hole layout into a full 18-hole golf course. The problem was how to integrate the new and old holes without them crisscrossing. To solve the dilemma, Maravilla visited all the golf courses he could all over the country in search of ideas for his redesign. He added what are now holes 12 and 13 to the course. Then he leased a patch of land from the Yranela family and put the the sixth and seventh holes there. His wife (?) Dona Francisca Q. de Maravilla generously allowed the use of her adjoining property holes number two and three. The bulldozer for the ground work was provided by Steve Tajanlangit Sr. free of charge.

The improvements were done slowly over a 25-year period because of the shortage of funds, something that did not hinder Maravilla and his board of directors. Today, holes five, eight, 11, 15 and 18 are intact. The current configuration reflects Maravilla’s respect for the course and his love for the game.

IN 1980, while dredging the lake fronting hole number ten, a rubber ball popped up. No ordinary golf ball, it was a Haskell ball that bore the markings of Wright & Ditson, Pat. April 11, 1899. A Gutta Percha ball, the predecessor of the Haskell was also recovered but immediately disintegrated. Later, in 1982, another Haskell ball (Spaulding Pat. April 11, 1899) was unearthed.

These finds offer incontrovertible evidence of the age of the Santa Barbara golf course and lend credence to the Club’s claim as the oldest existing golf course in the Philippines. A contender for this recognition was Zamboanga Golf Club, whose first holes were laid out in 1911 by the troops of the American General “Black Jack” Pershing. Manila Golf Club, founded in 1901, lost its bid for the title when it moved from Caloocan to Makati after World War II.

The National Historical Institute (NHI) validated the Club’s origins and declared it a national historical site and 2007 its centenary year. The unveiling of its of historical marker has was graced by former President Fidel V. Ramos, himself an avid golfer, Ambeth Ocampo director of the NHI, dignitaries from the British Embassy, the Iloilo elite and participants of the Mayor’s Cup, the tournament that kicked off celebrations for the Club’s centenary year.

The Iloilo Golf and Country Club was contacted by the Society of 1907 Golf Clubs some two years before; an organization of golf clubs founded in 1907 and based at the Lymm Golf Club in Chesire, England. Membership is by invitation only; the invitation is earned when the club’s origins are confirmed with the Royal and Ancient; the game’s governing body, then and now. The Society is dedicated to the preservation of the common heritage of some of the oldest golf clubs in the world and to foster relations between member clubs. Iloilo’s acceptance into that fold was significant. Mick Shopland, the Society president and co-founder was on hand for the start of the centenary celebrations. Shopland and his wife Dot, a one-time ladies’ captain at their home club at Lymm, braved the trip from England to participate in the Mayor’s Cup. A remarkable man with an undying love for the game, he keeps a log of his golfing travels. In 16 years, Mick has played more than 3,000 rounds of golf on 784 different courses all over the world; he’s left divots on golf courses as far flung as Kenya, New Zealand and the Dominican Republic. He can now add the Iloilo Golf and Country Club in Santa Barbara, the oldest golf course in the Philippines to that formidable resume.

Today the town of Santa Barbara is moving forward very quickly. The Iloilo airport has been moved from Iloilo City’s borough of Mandurriao to just up the road from the golf course. This will undoubtedly change life in the sleepy town forever, for wherever airports go, commerce is sure to follow. The Club’s current board of directors headed by Frankie Locsin realizes this and has moved to prepare the Club for the eventuality. It bought the only tract of land it yet didn’t own within the boundaries of the Club’s property and is now studying its options. One of these is redesigning the holes to take advantage of additional ground. The course will soon undergo a further rerouting to properly prepare her for the future and improve the on course experience.

The positioning of Santa Barbara as the gateway to Iloilo secures the Club’s future. The movement of people and goods is expected to spur local growth, which traditionally has been linked with the increase in the popularity of golf. For instance, the hotels planned to provide infrastructure to support the new airport will make the golf course more accessible than ever before to tourists, both foreign and local, and to businessmen looking to sneak into their agenda a round of golf at the oldest golf course in the country. By all indications, the Iloilo Golf and Country Club seems set for the next one hundred years.

A TRUE TEST OF GOLF

At 6,056 yards from the blue tees, playing to a par of 70, the Iloilo Golf and Country Club, an 18-hole golf course may be short by modern standards. But don’t let its lack of length fool you. This is a tough golf course.

What strikes you about the course is how hilly it is. The changes in elevation and the prevailing winds must be taken into account when clubbing for your shot. It’s home to a couple of par 4s of formidable length. The one-handicap, hole number two measures 455 yards and both 15 and 17 each measure 430 yards from the tips. The two par 5s are all but unreachable; severe elevation changes on both these holes make it impractical to go for the greens in two. The fairways are lined with trees, several of them more than hundred years old, putting a premium on hitting the fairway. As with any short course, the greens are Santa Barbara’s final defense. Many are severely sloped from back to front, making it imperative to keep the ball below the hole. Putting your ball off the green is a real possibility here. The fairways are covered with carabao grass and the greens with Zoysia.

The tee shot on number one takes you over a small pond to a fairway that rises to meet the tee shot then falls away to the left. Bunkers guard both sides of the ideal landing area at the crest of the hill. A draw will produce the the best results. The fairway slopes downwards from there and goes up again to one of the more forgiving greens on the course. Two is the one-handicap hole and its sheer length makes it a formidable test. The fairway slopes downward just over 200 yards from the tee and will leave you with a severe side-hill lie if you can’t reach the flat part of the fairway. This complicates reaching the large, kidney- shaped green. The 310-yard par 4 third is a forced dogleg left. The tee shot crosses a small pond and your approach another, on its way to the elevated green. This green is the most severely sloped from back to front, a result of unexpected settling of the front of the green.

Number four is the first of the par 5’s. It might not seem overly long at 520 yards, but the fairway slopes down, then goes up again as it doglegs to the right toward the green. A water hazard on the right is out of play for all but the worst slice. A tee shot up the left side of the fairway will put you in the best position; play to the right and you’ll have to deal with a very uneven lie for your second shot. The fifth is a 165-yard par 3 and sits parallel to 16, giving you a unique view of both greens from either tee. You’re hitting from one hilltop to another here. Beware the prevailing wind, which is usually into your face, so club appropriately. Six is a short, drivable, 282 yards but plays much longer due to the elevation changes. The flat part of the fairway is a good 100 feet below both the tee and green. OB (out of bounds) lurks behind the green, so approach the green with caution.

The course turns on itself here; seven is a 340-yard dogleg to the left. The fairway is terraced where it slopes downward 40 feet or so at the crook of the dogleg. The two-tiered green is sloped quite markedly from back to front; playing to the wrong level will result in a bogie or worse. The 385-yard eighth shares one of the largest tee boxes in the country with number seventeen. The three 300-yard par 4 ninth is a short dogleg to the left. Trees guard the corner of the dogleg; favor the right side of the fairway for the best angle from which to attack the green. The approach takes you over water to an elevated, subtly sloped green guarded by two bunkers and an ancient acacia tree just beyond the water hazard.

The back nine starts with a 165-yard par 3. The pond fronting the green is the source of the Gutta Percha and Haskell balls now so proudly on display at the club. The green is severely sloped from back to front though not quite as badly as number three. Eleven, a 390-yard 4-par, takes you up parallel to the clubhouse. Thirteen, at just 290-yards, would be drivable but for the old-growth trees that populate the dogleg. The hole turns left slightly to a green guarded by OBs behind it, so mind the approach to the green. Thirteen is the longest of the par 3s at 174 yards. Trees obscure your view of the green to the left; water and a huge acacia guard the front-right portion of the green. You’ll need to thread your tee shot around these obstacles. Reaching the green’s not the end of it, though; it’s large and sloped from back to front.

Fifteen, the other par 5, measures 550-yards and plays into the prevailing wind. The fairway drops 30 feet or so then doglegs right, uphill to the green. Again you want to stay below the pin on this hole. At 430 yards from the tips, 15 is one of the longer holes on the course. The large green is a bit more forgiving than most. Sixteen, at 160 yards, is the shortest of the par 3s. Again, tee to green is one hilltop to another and it’s imperative to be below the pin here. Seventeen may not look it at 430 yards on the card, but when the wind blows, it plays the longest of any of the 4 pars. From the shared tee box with eight, the tee shot takes you down and to the left to a fairway parallel to eight but some 80 feet below it. Aim your tee shot at the coconut palm that lines the right side of the fairway. Left of the fairway, OB is just one bad bounce away, so prudence must be exercised. The closing hole is a 335-yard par 4. The fairway falls away then severely rises to the green.

The Iloilo Golf and Country Club is a true test of golf. What it lacks in length is offset by the elevation changes, the elements and those greens. A complete game is required for a good round here. You will find use for every club in your bag.

article from: pinoygolfer.com