Afghani Golf Team Plays In Asian Games

A year ago on my old site, "Me and Old Man Par," I wrote an article about one of the most interesting golf courses in the world -- the Kabul Golf Club, a nine-holer in one of the most troubled and strife-torn areas in the world, Afghanistan.

One might think that golf (of all things) would be non-existent in a country that has seen decades of ongoing war, but that's not the case.  While the game is not widespread, it does exist there, and not only that, some of the players actually participated in the recent Asian Games.  Hashmatullah Sarwaree and Ali Ahmad Fazel finished at the bottom of the table of competitors in India, but the simple fact that they were there in the first place is a victory in and of itself.  That's because anything that resembles a normal life in a place like Afghanistan is a major win.

USA Today: Afghan Team Makes Asian Games Debut

That's probably why scores that were more than 130 strokes behind the winners in the four-round Asian Games competition weren't a major concern for the pair from Afghanistan, who finished third-to-last and last on the lush Dragon Lake Golf Course outside of Guangzhou on Saturday.

For 10 hours a day, pretty much every day, Sarwaree drives a taxi on the chaotic streets of Kabul.

That's only his job, though. His heart belongs to golf.

"I just like golf," he told The Associated Press. "I want to do it all the time."

Golf in Afghanistan is a different brand than most people are used to. First off, the greens are made of sand and oil, which actually makes them brown but keeps them from blowing away. And there's only one course in the whole country.

It's a great story. 

Read on for some background information on the world that these two players hail from, and also, read about the brave fight that one man has waged for years to keep a golf course open.

Mohammed Abdul’s Heroic Battle To Save Kabul Golf Club

(originally published at Me and Old Man Par, 11/12/09)

An interesting email landed in my inbox today from a friend deployed to Afghanistan, his third Middle Eastern tour. Besides the normal queries about life at home, frightening descriptions of what is going on in his life and lamentations that he wished it were all over and that he could set down his medical gear and not need to piece together soldiers and civilians, was an interesting note:

"I played golf today! It was the most incredible thing…and I even took a short lesson. Who would ever have believed that, just outside of Kabul?"

I won’t share much more than that, as the letter was a personal correspondence. It did give my mood a lift, however, to know that one of my good buddies got a very well deserved break on Veteran’s Day. Let me describe what he saw and experienced. I had drafted this entry back in the summer, but stuck it in the electronic file cabinet because Patricia Hannigan, the fine writer and blogger posted an entry about Kabul GC before I finished mine. Enjoy.

Even in the midst of a seemingly eternal war, Afghanistan’s Mohammed Afzal Abdul’s is still fighting to save the Kabul Golf Club. First, the Soviets invaded and parked their tanks on the 7th hole and turned the course into a military base. After that, the Taliban blew up the course’s clubhouse and bar because they served alcohol. Later, when the extreme Islamists, the Taliban, were driven out of power there by the Americans, a guerrilla war broke out to shatter the peace. Kabul GC is unfortunately located in one of the more dangerous places in the outskirts of the city – dangerous being a relative term in a country where seemingly no place is safe from terrorist attack or gun battles between Taliban fighters and their American opposition.

Originally six holes, Kabul GC opened in 1967 , closed in 1978, and reopened in 2004. During these three decades it has undergone several changes. It relocated to its present site in 1973 after a coup d’état and completely closed following a 1978 communist coup. It lay dormant until reopening in 1993 but closed again in 1996 when the Taliban banned sports. Not even the defeat of the Taliban freed it totally: after the US invasion in 2001, the course was used as an area for training the military in the fine art of land mine removal.

Eventually, the course was allowed to re-open. In the process of restoration to its present state, three Soviet tanks and a multiple rocket launcher were removed by a nonprofit agency in order to free the fairways of "movable obstructions." Strange things are found on golf courses everywhere from time to time, but few courses have ever needed to extract derelict tanks in order to be playable.

Sara Sidner of CNN details Abdul’s incredibly brave efforts to preserve The Olde Game in his country in a fantastic CNN.com entry:

Why would anyone open a golf course in Afghanistan in the midst of war? One man in Afghanistan can answer that question with the kind of conviction that is hard to challenge.

"Why not?" Mohammed Afzal Abdul said. "I like very much golf."

Actually he loves it — which could explain why Abdul has taken it upon himself to run the only golf course in the country. He is so passionate about it he has risked his life for the love of the game and the crumbling course. I’ll get to that in a second.

First I’ve got to give you a good mental picture of the course. It is located on the outskirts of Kabul. To get there you have to drive along a road that is considered risky, especially for foreigners, because of the threat of being robbed or kidnapped.

If you are not careful you will drive right past the course. Besides a dilapidated sign, the only hint there is a golf course here are the red flags on the hole-pins waving in the wind.

It’s an 18-hole course, if you use your imagination.

Kabul GC used to be a verdant place, filled with ardent golfers, but no more. Today, it is barren, with oil greens (oiled sand), and is hardly indistinguishable from the surrounding countryside. The "greens" are black and the fairways a sandy brown strewn with rocks and the detritus the war brings.

Mohammed Abdul worked here more than 30 years ago, when he was ten years old. Back then, he was a caddy. Today he’s the head pro, and does practically everything that he can do to make the course a better place, which is to say keep it a golf course at all. That may not seem like much, but then again, consider his circumstances – that Kabul GC exists in any form in 2009 is a testament to his constant and unabiding love for the place and for the game that is played there. That golf balls flies here, even if it is over ground that hardly resembles what we expect to see when we play, is proof of his success. Best of all, his son, 10 years old himself, works with him and is learning the game the way his father did – by carrying bags.

Playing is obviously a challenge, all other conditions being ignored. The ground is hard. Shots from the fairway are like the land, and the state of the country itself: brutal and unforgiving. It’s all rough, and it’s all hazard. Perhaps that explains the rules, clearly stated inside the clubhouse:

"Attack the course! Play aggressively. There are no gimmes. This is golf with an attitude."

Indeed. As it happens so often, golf imitates life. In Afghanistan, there are no gimmes and one can never quit. Even if the only thing the players here are trying to do is to preserve an old tradition that gives a cloying semblance to life there as it once was. For a homesick American like my friend, it was a respite for a little while in a land of horror and misery. For a while, he got to chase a little white ball towards a stick in the distance, and no matter the opulence of a given course – or complete lack of it, in this case – the game remains the same. Put the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. And have fun doing so.

For more on Kabul Golf Club, please visit The Golf Girl’s entry on the course.