Batam Away – 10th-13th October, 2017

First day before tee-off at Terring Bay-1

Eight of the ordinary LC’s went to Batam this week to play Palm Springs, Terring Bay and Batam Hills and the good part flying away, it’s just a short convenient trip with Malindo Air from Subang Airport.

 

Our first stop was at Palm Springs which was like a homecoming for me as I used to be member there when I was living in S’pore. They have added New Resort Course since I left so they operate 36-holes now, it’s a nice place and highly recommended but very busy over the weekend. The course can handle a heavy downpour well as it’s built on sand. See report issued for results.

 

Wednesday being the first day of the two day Batam Competition we played Terring Bay, also familjiar to me from my S’pore times. It has some very nice holes along the sea. One could sort of notice that the business is not as good as it used to be.

 

The final day we played Battam Hills a new experience for me. A very nice club house with Egypt decorations on the walls and nicely manicured plants along the fairways. It has a few challenging narrow fairways holes combined with wide opened. The last two courses are also very nice to play but cannot handle water as good as Palm Springs.

We stayed downtown Nagoya at Hotel – Harmoni Batam conveniently located next to Masale Village, a very good place for a few nights.

Batam and specially Nagoya has developed nicely over the years, it’s a lot more traffic though, the main roads are good and the always present motorcycles are well behaved compare to what we are used to.

 

Results

 

As I suspected with the form Bernard has shown lately he won with 36/40 = 76 points, followed by Ted 34/37 = 71 and Martin Walsh 37/32 = 69. It goes to show that one need a lower handicap to be competitive over two days or more.

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Correction …… Glen Wombwell’s score at Tering Bay on 11th October should be 105 for 35 points ….. and Ray Funnell’s score at Batam Hills on 12th October should be 117 for 21 points. This has been corrected in the master spreadsheet and the handicap records.

We had an incident/discussion the first day about Preferred Lie, we all know about that rule “closely mown area through the green” but this happen to be on another hole then we played on. My judgement then was that it’s based on the type/condition of the grass that counts, not on which fairway you are.

 

It was a very nice trip and I especially thank Bernard for volunteer for ‘money bag man’ it helped easing the task.

Photos

Last night seafood dinner and enjoymentPar 3 hole 7 Palm Course ovelooking the sea towards S'por

 

Results – Batam Away – Tering Bay – 4th November 2014

Report

The last day of the 3 day Batam Away was played at Tering Bay which was located very close to the Palm Springs course we played on Day 2. There were now 9 of us as Martin Walsh had left that morning to return to Singapore by ferry to catch a flight to Australia ….. noted however that he left the hotel without paying for the room and had to sheepishly call Ray Funnell from the ferry terminal to sort out this small issue!

Tering Bay Golf Club was a little jaded in comparison to Palm Springs but the course was very good with excellent and rather fast greens. We headed out at around 10:30am and the 3 flights were completed by around 3pm or so. Drinks and some snacks were enjoyed on the terrace before heading off for a seafood restaurant close-by for dinner. The restaurant was not the one as recommended by Jeff Pearce but obviously some relative or friend of the bus driver … however the food was fresh and they had cold beer so we all enjoyed a good dinner right by the sea.

Results

It was Stuart Taylor who won on this last day with an excellent personal best gross of 77 and 45 points with Bernard Romahn in second place with 40 points on count back from Andrew Robinson also on 40 points. Stuart won 2 sleeves of balls and Bernard got one sleeve of balls. Full results from Day 3 are below:

The overall winner of the 3 day Batam Away competition was Richard Moss with a total of 115 points who had led from Day 1 and with a substantial lead after 2 days it was going to be difficult to catch him. Second was Andrew Robinson with 109 points. Richard Moss was presented with an engraved winners tankard kindly donated by Glenn Wombwell. Jeff Pearce was presented with a consolation sleeve of balls for having the lowest total points for the 3 days. The final 3 day results are tabulated below :

Photos

Video

Iain Wise does an excellent impersonation of Ray Funnell teeing off on Hole No 1, Tering Bay Golf Course.