98 Years
"Golf", said author Tom Coyne, "is a gentleman's game". I was intimidated by this observation that I did not take up the game when a friend and client first invited me to learn how to play golf. To me it was a game played only by the rich, snobbish, older men with at least four hours of idle time in their hands every golf-playing day. Energetic and busy young men like me get better exercise by playing an hour or so of basketball, soccer, tennis, or billiards who then spend the rest of the evening after the game weight lifting San Miguel Pale Pilsen bottles until the wee hours of the morning.
When my knees could no longer chase after baseline shots I decided to slow down on lawn tennis and learn how to wield a seven iron. Three golf sets, thirty volumes of Golf Magazine, and several dented roofs and broken windows later I was ready to play with "gentlemen." By geographic necessity I applied for membership to the Iloilo Golf and Country Club, Inc., the owner of the only golf course within two hundred kilometers of my house. This golf course in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo prided itself as the oldest continuing golf course in the Philippines.
Old as it is, the Sta. Barbara golf course is blessed with rolling hills, shady trees, and native grass ideal for an enjoyable and interesting golf game. Nature provided the land plenty of underground waterways that surface here and there to form water hazards challenging average golfers. But, the soul and character of Iloilo Golf and Country Club is not the land. It is the members - 98 years ago up to now - who, because gentlemen are not called strange or peculiar, are extraordinary.
The earliest locals learning the strange game called golf played in the shadows of the Scottish engineers who first cleared and trimmed the virgin land to make a course worthy of their passion for the game. Those rugged Scots, who built the railway in Panay Island starting in 1907, snubbed the barbarians just learning the game and even barred the Americans from the golf course. The amateurish American golfers (of course that was before Eldrick whats-his-name became "Tiger ") had to carve out their own nine-hole weedy scrabble field course and play with the natives. That started the notoriety for snobbery and the rigorous screening procedure prescribed to become a member of the oldest golf course in the country.
The membership of the club eventually gravitated to include a few Filipino meztizos but the number of members grew very, very slowly. The membership of the club crept from a measly few in 1907 and is still a comparatively few almost a century later. The rigid screening process prevents a more rapid growth in numbers. To this day it is still possible for a prospective member to be barred from membership by a flimsy I-do-not-like-your face objection of any member. The "black ball" practice was absolute until sometime in the 1990s when a test of reasonableness was required of the objection to bar the membership of a prospect.
It was in this more relaxed admission climate that I became one of those playing the game of gentlemen. As a beginner unfamiliar with the etiquette, traditions, and the drop areas I felt intimidated by long- time members who wag their drivers with the swagger of pros just before they swat the ball out of bounds. Plenty of the members still looked too rich, too snobbish, and too fancily garbed that I could not have a graceful and comfortable drive at hole number one when some of them were looking on. Slowly I grew on them and mimicked them enough to have the familiar wag and swagger, as I swat the ball to the right of the out of bounds marker. For three years I bungled around with glee and contentment in all 18 holes of our golf course with no idea what is in store for the future aside from reminiscing our blunders at the club's watering hole at the end of every round.
Unfortunately, I precipitately committed to attend a strategic planning workshop organized by the newly elected officers. I had many sleepless nights formulating excuses before I resigned to the idea that I cannot escape two days of expected boredom.
So, on July 1, 2005 , I was at the clubhouse with thirty other hesitant attendees who looked like they were ordered by their wives to attend the PTA meeting. Fortunately, we had two very chic, intelligent, and good looking facilitators, Tita Puangco and Anne Betita, who were the only females among the attending golfers. These ladies erased boredom from the definition of seminar-workshop.
Tita and Anne expertly guided us through the paces of strategic planning by making us pick partners to critique and join groups for discussions. They made us jump up and down and dance to stretching exercise games when we began losing our focus. Partnering with one group to the next I realized how intelligent and successful achievers the members of the club are. I, of course, counted myself as their peer in those qualities. After eight hours of discussions, outlines, and drawings we finally produced the output of the strategic planning.
We were able to formulate our mission and vision in five short sentences declaring:
IGCCI Vision 2015
With 100 years of history and tradition behind us, we forge ahead to be a premier golf destination in the Philippines . Building on a championship, natural golf course, we pride ourselves in our world-class recreational facilities and services for family and business.
Mission Statement
Our mission is to preserve a unique Ilonggo heritage that provides enjoyment and fulfillment for our members with the passion for golf and enhances family oriented recreation.
In pursuit of our mission, we commit to:
- Our members, that we will provide first class golfing and recreational facilities and will ensure a sustained appreciation of share values.
- Our employees, that we will provide gainful employment and development opportunities
- Our community and local government, that we will partner to preserve and protect a sustainable environment.
When we finally agreed on the words, grammar, and style of these five sentences we felt so accomplished and successful. In this euphoria of success I realized how extra-ordinary indeed are the members of Iloilo Golf and Country Club. I realized how different we are from Juan, the illiterate voter, who could hardly write the letters G-M-A on the ballot.
I recalled that during elections impatient voters get exasperated at those who can barely write. These illiterates, like my illiterate cousin Abundio, take at least 30 minutes to register and another 60 minutes to finish drawing letters in their ballots. They write with effort but with conviction because they write down what are in their minds and what are in their hearts. A literary effort that takes all of 90 minutes to compose!
Men of superior skills, wealth, and sophistication - gentlemen in a word - are also supposed to write down what are in their minds and what are in their hearts. But the discussions, complexity, profoundness and genius of writing down five sentences take longer for us gentlemen. Unlike Abundio who needed 90 minutes to draw a few letters on the ballot, it took us gentlemen a bit longer to write five sentences. For us it took 98 Years.