Report
As you get older your memory starts to fail (among other things) and to be honest I had forgotten why we hadn't played Bukit Unggul for so long. I was very quickly reminded of its many failings as the morning progressed.
Registration
The registration process was abysmal which had been sadly messed up by Ray Funnell trying to help with pre-registering our 16 names the day before .... Ray's list of 16 names was registered under his name with no reference to my original booking in my name which I had done WITH caddies so there there were no caddies booked .... we eventually manage to scrabble some 4 caddies.
The desk boy then proceeded to eventually hand write all the starter chits before laboriously entering the same information into his computer ..... but he could not give me a proper printed and itemised receipt to show what I had paid! Having handed over RM1500 for a verbal charge of RM1495 I walked away with no authentication or confirmation of what I had paid for. I eventually did get the proper receipt much later as I teed off and when added up came to RM1207 .... some RM288 less than I had paid for!!! This required me post-game to go back to registration and get this money back from a rather guilty looking desk boy.
Tee Off
The starter was approached to ascertain where our 4 flights should start .... he could not speak or communicate and was not interested in helping out in anything to do with us teeing off. He told us eventually to all tee off on Tee Box 1. As Tee Box 10 only had a 2 ball starting one of our flights moved over there.
Course Condition
Now on to the course. I remember Bukit Unggul as being bad ...... it has certainly not improved in any way whatsoever. The course is in a sad state of disrepair throughout with poorly maintained fairways which have been ravaged by the wild boar, have many patches of uncut grass, holes, and where there is grass it is but a very thin layer over a very muddy soggy layer. There were open drain covers in very poor condition all over the course and multiple areas that had been marked by string or white paint as GUR. The fairways were all covered in cut grass mounds which had not been cleared.
Tee boxes were poor with large areas of bare ground and again there were ares of the tee boxes that had been dug up.
Bunkers were a disgrace with very little sand, many of them water logged or muddy and extremely stony with ragged unkempt edges all around.
The greens were in a fairly sad state and again had been dug up by the wild boar and many areas had simply been marked off with white paint as GUR (on the green!) with mounds of sand on the greens and little or no evidence of any remedial work being carried out to sort this mess. Hole No 2 had about 30% of the green unplayable due to white painted areas!! Many greens were also very bumpy and unpredictable.
I saw no evidence throughout the course of any standard course maintenance .... no sign of anyone working or maintaining the course ..... but of course there were the usual array of Indian ladies sitting around chatting, trying to sell balls with no evidence of work being done.
I did see the Course Manager making a round in a buggy at one point ..... does he not see these basic issues in the course and take some action! Wish I had the opportunity to talk to him.
Please refer to the photos in this report which highlight some of the many issues discussed above.
Restaurant
The restaurant food and level of service has shown no level of improvement from what I recall from before with the usual slow and tardy service and a few non attentive staff who had to be called on numerous occasions.
In summary I will be removing this course from our playlist and will certainly not be planning to return there again during my tenure as Convenor. It is sad to see such a scenic and interesting course slowly degrading into total disrepair - it really needs a major shakeup there otherwise I can foresee the course being totally unplayable very soon.
Ok ... rant over.
Many thanks to Mike Smith who paid for the drinks today at lunch to celebrate his Birthday ... he did not elucidate what Birthday it was .... suffice to say it was probably a big one! Thanks Mike!
Results
It was interesting to note that of the top 5 best scores today .... 4 of these were from the players who were members of Bukit Unggul .... obviously local knowledge counts for a lot here. We had 4 players score better than their handicap. The winner with an excellent gross 80 and 44 points was Bernard Romahn with Tony Morris runner up with 43 points and a gross score of 83. Full results below.
Photos
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