Smack in the middle of Cebu City in Banilad sits the scenic Cebu Country Club. The club traces its beginnings to the early 1900s as a nine-hole golf course built by British and American executives. Today, almost a century later, it has blossomed into the premiere course in the Visayas. The course is beautiful. The trees that border the fairways are as mature as any golf course I’ve seen. The fairways are carabao grass but this is part of the charm here; it is golf the way my grandfather played it, the way it used to be.
The course is flat but is no pushover. The fairways are defined by mature tree lines, mounding and water; lots of it, making the course play much harder than it reads on the card. Its main defenses are its greens. The greens are small so you will miss a few of them. This puts a premium on your short game. The greens are planted with native zoysia which is inherently grainy. This makes them almost unreadable if you’re playing the course for the first time. You will encounter side-hill putts that break uphill and downhill putts that are slow; details that are impossible to decipher unless you’ve played it a few times. Fortunately, the fairways are wide for the most part allowing you to take driver and swing away. You’ll need to get as much distance off the tee as you can to give yourself a shorter approach shot to deal with. Just make sure you don’t drive it in the water.
That’s the other killjoy on the golf course; water and there’s a lot of it. Water is in play on eleven of the eighteen holes. A recent redesign changed two holes; the fifth and sixth substantially. Five is totally different; different tee, different green and the tee shot now carries a water hazard. The club added substantial length to number six, pushing the tee box back and angling it over what used to be the fifth green. They’re expanding the fairway to the right of the cart path on the left and once this is completed the path will run to the left of the expanded area. This will create a bit of a dogleg in the otherwise straight hole which will later be further accentuated when they expand the water hazard on the right to encroach even further on the right side of the fairway. The difficult green will then be pushed further to the right of the golfer bringing the bunker on the left side of the fairway into play. The changes have significantly increased the difficulty of the two holes. Number six is now the handicap one.
I can’t be sure, but number three seems like the course’s signature hole. It’s a gorgeous little par-3 with the green fronted by a pond with a couple of trees growing out of it. It’s also home to the club’s resident ducks and pigeons that are unafraid of humans and will waddle right up to you looking for a handout. Eight is a proper par 4; most will need a fairway wood or hybrid to reach the green even after a good tee shot. The par 5s are the most aesthetically pleasing; two, seven, eleven and sixteen are all beauties and offer real scoring opportunities to those that safely navigate their fairways. Eighteen is a tough finishing hole; there’s OB right and the hole doglegs around it. Bunkers guard the corner waiting for those that take too safe a line off the tee.
In addition to being a tough short track, this course has also produced a number of great champions. The legendary “Bantam” Ben Arda honed his game on these very fairways and former Philippine Open champion Rudy Lavares, who holds the four-day scoring record of the event, also calls Cebu Country Club home. He was best known for leading the Philippines to a second place finish in the World Cup in 1977 when he finished as runner-up to Gary Player in individual play. He was the Order of Merit leader in the local tour in the early 90′s and played the Old Course at St. Andrews in the Dunhill Cup as the representative of the Philippines.
In the mid-1970s when the Philippine Amateur was played in this course, a wiry young kid from Bukidnon barely made the match play stages qualifying as the sixteenth and last seed. He beat the number one seed and went on to win the tournament becoming its youngest winner. His legend grew from there. His name is Frankie Miñoza.
Since the club is located smack in the middle of the city, the course gets a substantial amount of use. At the recently concluded Aboitiz Invitational, the organizers were pleasantly surprised at how much traffic the course got during the week. Also typical of a city club, the food is very, very good and the club’s expansive veranda is a wonderful place to enjoy it. The salpicado and the paksiw na isda are best sellers. Chase that down with the ice cream roll and you’ll be looking for a spot to curl up on for a nap.
Cebu Country Club is link to golf in the Philippines past, a glimpse into the game during its hey-day and is truly the first golf course of the Visayas. Its beauty and tranquillity are complimented by its accessibility and appeal to a broad spectrum of golfers and make it a must-play when in the Queen City of the South.
