PLAYING THE PLANTATION - 2003

PLAYING THE PLANTATION (2003)

In July 2001 an essential ingredient in the Tobago Plantations resort development opened for business: its prestigious 18 hole championship golf course. So, what’s it like and who can play? Mark Meredith takes a look at a course where golf is not a good walk spoiled.

PHOTOS: MARK MEREDITH

TWO YEARS AGO Tobago Plantations golf course was a construction site overrun with large lorries which thundered between white sand peaks that dazzled the eye; like miniAlpine ranges without the ski lifts. Today, those peaks of bunker sand have disappeared, avalanched into pancake-shaped moulds glued to the contours of manicured greens and aprons, and cunningly hidden behind hummocks and hillocks alongside snaking fairways.

The aggregate-laden lorries still thunder by — a severe hook on the 1st tee could see your ball traveling distances you’d never imagined. Construction of palatial villas and condos on the 750 acre Lowlands Estate, just south of Tobago’s bustling, traffic-clogged

capital Scarborough, continues apace. It provides an interesting distraction to the central matter of keeping your ball in play.

By anyone’s standards, the transformation from the organised chaos of construction and ugliness of half -cleared land to what exists today is remarkable. Parts of the 18 hole, English PGA-designed course are quite beautiful, the front nine holes especially so.

After the gentle opening par 4, 1st hole the course swings out towards the sea past the hotel to a rocky peninsula and the 3rd green, along twisting fairways of Bermuda grass bounded by water, streams, coconuts, mangroves and luxurious villas in various stages of construction. The seaside holes at Tobago Plantations are buffeted by an ever-present wind sweeping in from the ocean that plays havoc with high drives. They demand a links strategy which this part of the course seems especially designed to encourage: open spaces to manouvre through a sparse, stark landscape of windswept naked indians — trees, in case you’d wondered, with bark like burnished copper.

The course turns back inland through dense mangroves, coconut trees, woods and water.

Holes 4 through 9 trill and squawk and it’s worth bringing binoculars. The prettiest area of the course, it borders Petit Trou Lagoon which is surrounded on three sides by mangroves which have been left as a nature sanctuary. There is relief to be found from the wind here, but the downside is that there is less room for error from natural and manmade hazards. Once your ball has found mangrove mud, that’s it.

The back nine holes are more open and links-like, all wind prone, and most have water.

On this side of the course the scale of the resort project is more pronounced. We had to navigate a road of construction traffic. Holes 13 through 16 play around an island of multicoloured condos which provide a strikingly incongruous contrast to the natural contours and colours you are negotiating. My swing and I had warmed up nicely and I played my best golf these 9 holes, except for the unlucky 13th when my ball missed a purple apartment window by a whisker. I dropped the ball by the out of bounds marker and creamed a three wood, launching my ball as straight as a dye to the flag. It soared over it to drown in the lake, the part which was cunningly wrapped behind the green like an invisible, watery collar.

It might sound obvious, but keep your ball on the fairway and your are in with a shout of a good score. Playing off the white mens’ day tees the course measures 6,018 yards which is not long — off the tournament tees it’s 7009 yards — and birdie oportunities exist fairly regularly, but not as often as the chance for disaster. It’s fun. The course seems to have settled nicely in such a short time. Indeed, there are times during the round when you’d swear it had been lying here for years, secreted away behind the mangroves and coconut trees, known only to a few who’d preferred to keep it that way.

That could continue, conceivably, if the Tobago Plantations resort development, which includes the 200 room Hilton Tobago hotel, fails to attract golfers among its guests and property owners. Because playing here really is rather expensive, despite British Golf Director Chris Patey’s assertion that it is “good value” in comparison to international resorts worldwide. That may be true, but at the moment it is priced beyond the reach of young Trinbagonians certainly, and most other West Indians too. Playing here is not even an option for tourists who are also on a budget. And that’s a shame because this is a wonderful golf course which offers something for all and cries out to be used by as many as practically possible.

Will that happen? Well, Chris Patey is making encouraging noises. An additional nine hole Sugar Mill Course is planned, suited for higher handicappers and beginners at about half the current green fee. Junior golf programmes, which he says will be tailored for locals, are planned to compliment the Golf Academy and driving range. However, the championship course I played will eventually require a handicap certificate and letter of introduction for visitors. The forward-thinking Director of Golf says he wants the golf development to be inclusive to all. I hope he gets his wish.

Because it is a rich irony that the Caribbean archipelago, despite its limited land resources, has become such a hugely successful breeding ground for golf courses, disproportionately so, with many ranking among the finest and most scenic in the world.

Yet, apart from Stephen Ames of Trinidad, there are no home-grown golf stars strutting the PGA stage as a result of this patronage, no West Indian Woods in the wings. Not a whisper. Not even in a region brimming with natural athletic talent and acres upon acres of manicured training facilities. Except in a very few instances, like Chaguaramas’s public course in Trinidad, golf remains financially tailored to foreign visitors and the well-off local elite.

Could Tobago Plantations suffer the sad fate of nearby, neglected Mt Irvine, Tobago’s only other golf course and an excellent one once of proven championship quality? To become no more than a pleasing backdrop for exotic Caribbean scenery enjoyed from the porch of one’s condo or villa? For the last 15 years Mt Irvine ghost course golfers have been few and far between whenever I’ve played it or driven by on my way up the coast to snorkel.

And I’ve always ended up visiting Tobago at the busiest times, always wondering at the waste of it.

I mention this as my visit to Tobago Plantions golf course took place two days after Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival, when Tobago’s charms and recuperative powers act as a magnet for hordes of masqueraders and partygoers who descend on the sister isle by any means possible. It’s busy. Yes, I was told, the hotel (Hilton) was fully booked — as was most of nearby Crown Point. But, like Mt Irvine that same week, the golf course was basically empty. Just my father and me, two ladies we let through on the 2nd, and two Americans we left far behind on the 3rd. We never saw a soul again except for busy green staff. And I couldn’t stop thinking: where is everyone?

Now, Tobago Plantations opened their golf course in July 2001— no mean feat considering the superlative result — and I suppose that’s not long to get known. But it has been featured in international golf magazines, and the resort has received extensive advertising publicity in the region, and it’s getting more now. If it really is still a secret, then it should be one no longer. From March 18th to 22nd, satellite TV beamed live coverage of the European Seniors Tour as it swung into Tobago Plantations with star names like Tony Jacklin, Tommy Houghton, and Bernard Gallacher among the top 48 competitors from last year’s European Seniors Order of Merit appearing. So, hopefully, after advertising like that, the course will attract the golfers it needs.

Who is Tobago Plantations golf course aimed at? Well, in many ways a visit here is, I imagine, what you’d find at a top American course: fleets of compulsory buggies; impeccably high standards and attention to detail throughout, from the quality of the club hire to the bucket of sand and scoop supplied with the buggy for repairing your divots; reams of informative, well produced marketing literature on the golf course; friendly, pleasant staff; smooth, concrete paths for buggies; and, not least, a beautifully maintained and structured golf course.

So I was surprised to learn from the English Club Professional, Wayne Allen, that the Europeans were, in fact, the market. Certainly, the course’s presentation may make it appear American, but it is actually tropically British in style, almost like playing a links course sprinkled with parkland holes. And I found it rather odd that you would build a golf course to appeal to Europeans but dress it up as something American.

For example, in Europe, people who play golf like to walk between their shots. “Golf, a good walk spoiled”, goes the old joke. The exercise of walking in beautiful surroundings is part of the sport’s fundamental appeal. I am sorry, but I have always found it absurd that you are banned — banned — from walking on so many US courses. You must go by buggy. The excuse given normally is that it is to speed up play. Well, excuse me while I run for cover in my compulsory buggy from the stampede of golfers currently rampaging down Tobago’s fairways!

Chris Patey and I disagree about buggies. The heat, the distance between greens to tees, and speed are essential reasons for their use, he argues. “Buggies and walking don’t mix,” he insists, adding that most would choose to take a buggy anyway, especially foreigners and those on a four day golf package. Me, I’d just like the choice, and I wouldn’t want to carry my bag either.

But there are no caddies available, sadly. It goes against the automated ethos of modern resort golf, I suppose. But it would do Tobago Plantations no harm to think again, not just because having a caddy carry your bag is a preferable way of playing golf to driving — you won’t get any advice from your buggy and it won’t find your ball — but it would give young, local players the chance to fulfill some golfing potential, to become an assistant. or learn the caddy trade, quite an art itself. And it would make for a quicker round. It took the two of us a little over four hours with no holdups and only four lost balls, which is a long time for a twoball. This is why:

At Tobago Plantations you cannot, for a moment, drive off the concrete paths on your buggy which border the edges of the fairways. Now, if your ball travels to the other side of the fairway, or well beyond, from the buggy path, which it freqently will, you soon find yourself zigzagging from buggy to ball and back again, endlessly, like a pinball, in and out, all the way up the fairway. It’s tiring. You will find you have ambitiously selected a three iron when you really needed a wedge to whack it from that grassy clump, so you traverse the fairway once more, hopefully select the right clubs to choose from, go back to the ball, strike it, and then return to the buggy to drive on a few milliseconds to repeat the process again. And, of course, you have your partners’ golf balls and buggies to think about and collect, too.

I didn’t have to hand over US$95 (TT$580) each, for our green fee, which is the published Rack rate. I was on assignment and, occasionally, even journalists deserve the odd break.

That price includes the buggy you are forced, in effect, to pay for. Various discounted green packages are available to Hilton guests and guests of various local hotels, and there’s a rate for locals of TT$400. Under18 years and you recieve a 50 per cent discount.

Instead we handed over TT$300 for two sets of hire clubs, excellent Calloway Golf irons with “Big Bertha” metal woods. They did us proud. Even after 18 hot holes of buggy aerobics we did OK, reasonably well, for us. We must have been inspired by the sheer splendour of this imaginatively designed, sumptuously maintained, water-strewn course.

Tobago Plantations golf course is truly enjoyable. There is plenty in it to encourage higher handicappers and senior players, and there is more than enough to satisfy the demands of low handicappers. It will make for great competition golf . So, if you are lucky enough to find it within your budget, and you enjoy a quiet drive on a great course, this is for you.

As for the rest of us, well, we live in hope.