A 20 minute drive from our hotel took us to SPGC. This is a course owned by Singha Brewery, which is situated next door. Rosie wasn’t feeling too well, she never copes with constant air-conditioning well and had a bit of a head cold and fever. She stayed home and slept all morning. Debbie decided to go shopping instead of golf, so it was only Neil and Bruce.
On driving into the course, first impressions were excellent, it was very modern and had good facilities . Our caddies had a bit of English, which was better than the last four games in Lao. They encouraged us to have a practice putt, which was also unusual. We were glad we did, since the greens were lightning fast and we needed a bit of time to adjust.
Once we started to play, we found the fairways quite wide and although there was a bit of water, it wasn’t hard to avoid it. The bunkers were a different matter, they surrounded the greens as usual but were in good condition. The pin placements were clearly set by a saddest, they were on the edges of the greens, with big runoffs if you didn’t stop the ball. The undulations of the greens were quite dramatic, so you were often trying to putt up a large incline or stop your ball going down a slope.
We started on the back nine and unfortunately Neil had a shocker, Bruce was luckier and on hole 7 his approach stopped with a metre of the pin and then he got a birdie. On hole 9 his approach from 100m also stopped close to the pin to salvage par.
A couple of days later, all of us returned to play Singha Park again which was great. Rosie and Deb really enjoyed the course and found it to be the best we have played so far. Again, we all found the greens very tricky with all the undulations. They were also very hard so the ball didn’t stop when it landed on them. Bruce played some nice shots into the greens only to see them run off the back, this wouldn’t have happened at most courses.
After the game we stopped for lunch, which was very nice and enjoyable. Bruce had a couple of Singha beers so that he could support the brewery.
Neil was not feeling too good today, we think it might be something he ate at lunch yesterday. After four holes he stopped scoring (or telling me his score). He did have some good holes later in the game, but overall he wasn’t comfortable. Deb played very well and is improving her putting dramatically.
