Rules of life

By Al S. Mendoza

BAGUIO CITY–The weather here is at its finest this time of year. 

Cool but not nippy.

Warm but not hot when directly under the sun.

Nice feeling when close to your loved one. Especially in the evening, when a warm body becomes your heater.

We come here actually more for the weather than anything. 

Oh, wait, we also come here for the strawberries, which should share equal rank with the weather.  Include the cabbage, carrot, broccoli, potato and, yes, the roses.

Ah, let me say it again. A rose, by any other name, smells as sweet.

But for me, there’s another reason why I’m here yearly û a major one, I must say.

I come here yearly for the Fil-Am Golf Invitational Championships.

Held simultaneously at Camp John Hay and Baguio Country Club, the Fil-Am golf has become a permanent fixture in my calendar. Ask Anthony de Leon, the dashing Country Club manager.

Almost a thousand golfers from nearly 15 countries converge here for the Fil-Am golf, which the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the world’s biggest golf tournament in terms of the number of participants entered.

No money is at stake here, only prestige.

Since it began in 1949 with only four teams in attendance, the Fil-Am golf has expanded into a major national event attracting nearly 100 teams worldwide.

It’s a two-week affair.  The first week is reserved for our senior players, the second week our men’s regular.

Both tournaments command equal respect and stature as the game of golf is eternally known as the gentleman’s game.

You don’t really classify a golfer by how good he is, you classify him always as the practitioner of everything that the game stands for: gentleman at all times.

The Fil-Am will not have lasted this long if not for the camaraderie, friendship and gentlemanly ways each golfer exhibits during the tournament.

The tournament founders led by the late Senator Rogelio dela Rosa had envisioned it that way.  The same tenets they established in 1949 are still being embraced today – with as much vigor, as always.

I am here doing two jobs: Covering it for my newspaper that I had just transferred to (The Philippine Chronicle), and as member of the Tournament Committee chiefly as rules man with Taby Tabaniag and Jake P. Ayson.

During the last five years that Taby, Jake and I had been working as rules officials, we have yet to hear of a participant going home feeling short-changed. 

Modesty aside, we use the rules to guide and help our participants.  Not once did we use the rules neither to intimidate, nor threaten if not terrorize, a player.

In our credo, rules are there to aid, not to irk, a player.  We do not afflict, we only apply the rules to best of our abilities.

 The rules of golf are like the rules of life: You misbehave, you suffer the consequences.

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/general-admission/)

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