Posted on 10/28/2003 6:53:06 AM PST by presidio9
DAMASCUS, Syria — Members of the Cham Golf & Country Club are the first to admit that golf remains something of a mystery to most Syrians.
Hence a photocopied handout detailing the physical attributes of the only golf course in Syria includes a brief summary of the sport.
"The principle of the Golf game is based on putting the ball in the hole," the English version reads in part. "The player begins from a specified place called (Tee) till the arrival of the ball to the (Green) in which the hole is located."
This being the Middle East, statistics about how many Syrians actually play the game are, well, fluid. Adib Mardim Bey, the club manager, puts the number of Syrian members at around 60, with maybe 24 golfers among them, including half a dozen women. In brief, exceedingly few in a country of 17 million — and the $3,000 club membership and $65 per round fee assure that golf will remain the sport of a small elite for the foreseeable future.
"It's new, and when you talk about golf, you are talking about something strange in this society," said Bashar Dardari, a 38-year-old architect and the director of an investment company, hitting balls on the driving range with his 4-year-old son. He took up the game a year ago, and whenever he mentions it to friends he usually draws either a laugh or arch remarks of the "So now we are playing golf" variety.
Next to him on the driving range, Nizar Asaad, one of Syria's most prominent businessmen, whacked his way through his fifth or sixth lesson with his son. Some of Mr. Asaad's shots sailed aloft, some stuttered away from the tee.
"Repetition teaches the donkey," groused the 55-year-old gas exploration and construction tycoon, using an Arabic expression usually reserved for recalcitrant children or dim-witted servants. Taking a break, he dispatched a golf cart to bring aged Cuban cigars from the humidor in his Mercedes.
Khaled Samawi, another businessman and the club's best player (a 4 handicap), is credited with coaxing most new players onto the course. Raised in Libya and Switzerland, the 39-year-old learned to play while enrolled at the University of Southern California from 1982-87.
"It took me five years to get my B.A. because I played so much golf there," laughed Mr. Samawi, a tall, burly man who shares some traits with the expatriate golfers. (He swears in English whenever he misses a putt, for example.)
Mr. Samawi made his decision to return to Syria two years ago based more or less on the course, which opened in September 2001. He had been working as an investment banker in Geneva when a merger left him without an immediate job. He moved back to the Middle East to give his three children some exposure to their native language and culture, with the course convincing him that Syria was the best choice.
He was not unique in that way. Steven Grant, the chief of drilling operations for the Shell Oil Company in Syria and the British captain of the club, sought to persuade his friend Niall Farren to move his family from Scotland to Damascus.
Now Damascus and its twisting bazaars contain innumerable sights of historical interest, including the tomb of the famous Islamic warrior Saladin and the Street Called Straight, where Biblical legend maintains that Saul of Tarsus became St. Paul the Apostle.
The first place Mr. Farren was shown was the 18-hole, par 72 course. He moved.
"In Aberdeen, I had to get up at 6 a.m. to pick a tee time," Mr. Farren said. "To have a course like this at your doorstep — and you never have to wait to tee — is fantastic."
Syria still maintains Mediterranean working hours, meaning offices shut between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. before reopening in early evening. Mr. Samawi finds the midday break the perfect time to knock off 18 holes, playing five games a week. The country's Californiaesque climate assures a year-round golf season.
The course attracts golfers from as far away as Amman, three hours by car, and Beirut, two hours, as well as United Nations soldiers serving as peacekeepers on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It is not unusual for golf courses in the Middle East to consist of one big sand trap, with golfers carting around little pieces of turf to whack their balls, although that is slowly changing.
The Cham Country Club (Cham is the Syrian name for the capital) is about 10 miles from downtown Damascus and situated next to a 500-room luxury hotel. The grassy, 150-acre course was built with an eye toward a tourism boom that never quite materialized.
Although Syria has seen a swelling tide of Arab visitors, concern about Mideast violence keeps most Westerners away except for various diplomats, oil engineers and a few businessmen stationed here. The course has a polyglot feel, with "Fore!" booming across the fairways in a mixture of English, Japanese and various other accents.
When a golfer on the next tee shanks a shot sideways across the green where Mr. Farren is trying to putt, he quips, "That is the only Iranian golfer in Syria for you."
The golfers use the peaceful oasis, dotted with thousands of trees and fragrant herbs — palm and olive and rosemary — as a ready means to escape the region's turmoil.
"Are you writing an article about tourism or just the golf course, or do you just want to see the place before you bomb it?" Mr. Samawi teased when an American visitor first approached.
"For a few hours a day you can turn the whole world off and just concentrate on hitting the ball," he added later. "You have to think about your game, and you can't think about business or politics or the problems in the world or the Middle East. That is why golf is so important."
Khaled Samawi, right, at the Cham
Golf & Country Club in Damascus. He learned
to play golf in California.
The course, the only one in Syria, puts out a
brief explanation of the rules of this exotic game.
Yeah, it has always kind of amused me.
What do I win?
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