Golf in the Philippines - and meeting Ruthie

Note - This is first of several things I am writing about my recent trip to the Philippines, not all of which will be orginally published here.  I will post a link to the others as they are published.

It started out as a simple ask:  While I’m in Manila, I’d love to play the little golf course around Intramuros.  

Intramuros is the old walled city of Manila, founded and built at roughly the same time as my Florida hometown of St. Augustine.  However, unlike St. Augustine, much of the original wall of Intramuros is still standing, and thanks to lax zoning regulations, a large portion of it is used to frame a small golf course, where the walls are very much in play.   Since they had night golf, I figured we could knock it out one evening after a day of meetings - and maybe I could add Asia to the list of places where I have a birdie.

Early Wednesday morning, on the way to the hotel from the chaos of arrival pick-up at NAIA (the airport), LA - the young man I mentor and reason for the trip says to me that the course is closed the only night we could make it work.

No biggie I say…golf is literally the last reason I’m there.  I had come to give a few talks, for a bunch of meetings, and for his daughter Lexi's christening, for whom he'd ask me to serve as Godfather.  “No, we’ll find time for you to have golf,” he says in response.  I’ve made the trip for him, and LA is determined to make my trip worthwhile.   Golf he promised - and golf I’d play.  At this point, I was his guest, and as anyone who has been to to the Philippines, you'd know that was the end of that.

By Thursday afternoon, the game is set – the next day, Friday morning, I would be teeing off at 630AM at Forest Hills, a Nicklaus design some 15 minutes…no 30…no 45…roughly an hour outside of Quezon City in metro Manila, where we are staying Thursday night (if you have ever spent time in the developing world, you’ll understand).   

LA has actual work to do, so he arranges a car to take me out to the course, and in the predawn Manila night, we head east to the course. 

In that part of the nation, there is a mountain range that runs right down the middle of the island of Luzon – the largest of the 7,000 islands that make up the country.  Driving east from Manila, the course is set just as the land starts to climb vertically from the otherwise largely flat Metro Manila area.  Development continues to move eastward into the mountains, and the course is basically right where development ends and the jungle begins– but getting there requires navigating all of the humanity of that side of Manila.

The region has been trying to widen the roads to deal with an ever-growing population – and an even faster growing infrastructure problem, and on the road to Antipolo – the last town on the Manila side of the mountains, the telltale signs of Manila infrastructure projects are obvious:  a road widened from 2 lanes to 6 lanes, then back to 2 with no warning (or merge zones) – and of course my favorite, new lanes of traffic paved around utility poles that were not moved before widening, making the new lane useless. 

Thank God for Philippines time, I think to myself, because it will be a miracle if we make our tee time.  

A litlte over an hour after leaving the hotel, we hang a left off the main road, climb into a development, and arrive at Forest Hills clubhouse, an imposing, largely open-air structure, and very much the centerpiece of this club.  It is here I meet Roger, my host, and a local contractor who is a friend of a friend of a friend.  I suspect he was as unsure of how he ended up with me in his group, as I was how he ended up my host.

We head to the first tee, me with a dozen used Titleists, and a glove Roger was kind enough to buy for me.  For a few minutes, since we only had one bag, I thought I was playing off Roger’s clubs, but right before we take the tee, a set of clubs arrive – Roger’s son’s clubs I later learn, along with Ruthie, my caddie for the day.   To get a sense of Ruthie, she was barely taller than my driver.  To say I underestimated her caddying skills would itself be a massive understatement. 

Let’s just say my expectations for the day were low.  I hadn’t hit a ball in nearly a month, was still dealing with jet lag, and probably slept four hours the night before.  I memorialized this feeling on Twitter as we pulled up to the club: “It’s 530a, and I’m going to play golf in tennis shoes, whatever rental clubs the local course has, a dozen used (& likely range) balls & no glove. Let’s have a day!,” to which my friend Mark responded, “guaranteed to be one of the best rounds of your life.”  Sure I thought, my main goal at the moment was not embarrassing myself, or any of the people who had gone above and beyond to get me on a course.

For today’s purposes, Roger and I were in a cart with our clubs, and Ruthie was walking.  I stretched for about 60 seconds and shot-gunned what was left of my coffee.  Ruthie hands me a driver I've never before touched in my life, and a plastic tee.  I pegged a ball in the ground, took one uncommitted practice swing, and somehow, fully expecting to make a mess of the tee shot, I hit one about 270 down the right side of the fairway.  Everyone is impressed, no one more than me.  Sometimes all it takes is embracing lowered expectations. 

I get to my ball feeling pretty good about myself.  Ruthie had somehow beaten me to it – and announces I have 130 – even though I only have about 115 according to the yardage marker.  Uphill – and humid she says, and hands me a wedge.  I made a confident swing, and promptly top it about 50 yards – followed by a bladed wedge into the back bunker.  Clearly just need to loosen up, I think to myself jumping into that greenside bunker.  

But alas, it gets worse.. 

I proceed to top my driver on the second hole, followed by topping my second shot – and blading my 3^rd.  I am completely lost.   I’ve topped or thinned 5 shots in a row, and at this point, I am apologizing to Roger and his friend Alan, our other playing partner, for ruining their morning.  I can see a look of fear in Ruthie’s eyes – she knew this was going to be a long day. 

I eventually top my way to the green, leaving myself 20-feet for a double-bogey 6 after not getting a single shot more than 3 feet off the ground.  I read it as just outside left edge.  I asked Ruthie – who shook her head disapprovingly.  She points at the middle of the cup.  I play it straight, and watched it break right as I expected – and just as I am getting ready to ask Ruthie what happened, it breaks back left and drops in the center of the cup.

Damn Ruthie, that’s impressive. I never saw that second break. 

We get to 3, a short uphill par 4, and just like on one, I pound a drive to where I have a short pitch shot.  Then it happened again – I blade the thing over the green.  WTF I say to myself, if anything my misses tend to be heavy – I had no idea what was happening.   Then right there in the middle of a fairway carved out of the mountain jungle, I remembered something – in America, I am an average height guy – but in the Philippines, I am probably 6 inches taller than most.  

Alas, if Roger’s son’s clubs were standard length in the Philippines, no wonder I can’t make any contact – I was playing with clubs a solid inch or two shorter than mine.  Only one way to test the theory:  on the next tee box, the 180 yard 4^th hole,  I pull 7 iron – squat down a lot more than normal in my stance and absolutely flushed one.  Granted it landed 15-20 yards short, humidity Ruthie reminds me (and dead golf balls) as she tells me I should have hit 6, but regardless, I’m fist-bumping Roger for the fact it was airborne. 

Explaining my situation to Mark, he suggests over text in addition to my adjustment to stand a little closer and swing a little steeper, and I start hitting the ball well.   I still can’t figure out what irons to hit, but thankfully Ruthie has figured out my game very quickly.   Turns out she’s caddied there for more than 20 years, and when i ask, she admits plays herself, every Monday if she can, when the course is open to employees.  We get on a nice run of pars.  My first impression of her was 100% wrong – she’s an absolute pro out there. 

We get to 9, a 400 or so yard uphill par 4, and I’m feeling it, but I still don’t have a birdie.  After a solid drive, I have maybe 125 in, and as I stand over the ball with a wedge, Ruthie stands there silently with a 9 iron in her hand – close enough that it was obvious she was protesting my club choice.  I hand her back the wedge, grab the nine and hit it about 6 feet from the pin, and after another great read from Ruthie, and I had my first birdie of the day – and first one in Asia.   Ruthie gives me a fistbump.    

I don’t know Ruthie’s personal situation, but I have a hunch.  Given her work experience, I guessed we were roughly the same age.  She told me she lived in nearby town and based on the area we had driven through to get there, her town was like most in the nation:  gritty and poor.  Even middle class in The Philippines would be considered poverty in the US, and I doubted a caddie earned a middle-class salary.    In The Philippines – the reality of poverty is inescapable – there are no walled resorts to hide tourists from it, no barriers to shield it.  For me, when I travel to places like this, it is always the thing I struggle with – balancing my own blessing of winning the birth lottery, with those who have no choice but to hustle day after day, hawking things in the market, or in Ruthie’s case, chasing a guy around like me – carrying dirt in a Hello Kitty bag to fill my divots. 

Roger is a truly gracious host.  Turns out he is from a town I had visited on a previous trip and had been to the US many times.  By the back nine, he’s offering to take me out again before heading home – as is Ruthie, who is clearly a much bigger fan of the second 18 at Forest Hills, a course designed by Arnold Palmer.  I truly hope next trip I can take them both up on the offer.

Other than a single time, a misclub on a long par 3 13^th where I didn’t ask Ruthie first and promptly airmailed the green into the shit at the edge of the jungle (she says “you hit 4 Mr. Steve – you should have hit 5 or 6.), I don’t hit a single shot on the back nine without checking with Ruthie first, her guiding me to 2 more birdies, and keeping me from doing dumb things that would lead to big numbers.  She's easily saved me 5 or 6 shots in this round.

We get to the final hole, and if there was ever a classic “Jack Nicklaus” finishing hole, it is 18 at Forest Hills.  A long par 4, the tee shot calls for a cut, and the second is uphill to a green sloped in a way that a high fade would stop on a dime, and a draw would kick left and down a slope, leaving the player with a tricky chip shot.

I don’t hit a cut, so my high draw tee shot left me with an awkward second, and in my attempt to hit the shot Jack designed, I cold pushed into a deep greenside bunker, where a tough shot still left me with 25 feet uphill from the fringe for par.   I’d spent the last few holes thanking Ruthie for her patience and help, and as she was cleaning my clubs and getting ready for her afternoon group, I realized I needed her help one last time on that tricky green.  A ball right and be sure to get it there, she says.  As soon as I hit it, I knew it was going in. 

Quickly after we all congratulated each other on a nice round, the driver rushed me off.  I had a speech to give in 30 minutes, and well, it was an hour away.  Downtime tends to be non-existent for me on these trips.   But I did ask for a few seconds to grab a quick photo with the best greens-reader that side of the International Date Line.  Fortunately, Ruthie agreed. 

I ended up with a pretty good score for the day, but the score didn’t really matter.  Mark was right – it had been one of the greatest rounds of my life.