Cooper's Kazakh capers: Pt3

By Matt Cooper Last updated: 19th September 2009

The continuing adventures of Matt Cooper in Kazakhstan:

Lost ball

Earlier in the week Ruben and I noticed three players and their caddies looking for a lost ball to the right of the par-five sixth hole. We made our way over to help out and immediately saw it hiding away in a place beneath a new tree that the players and caddies would never have seen.

The ball belonged to Simon Thornton who was able to take a free drop but was still left with a difficult shot through a narrow gap if he was to find the green in two.

Just prior to taking his stance he turned to us, crossed himself as if in prayer, smiled and then launched a great shot over the imposing bunker at the front of the putting surface.

We later caught up with him in the clubhouse. "I made three," he laughed. "It landed in the fringe and rolled out to about three feet!"

Lost in translation

The bizarre terms and phrases used in the game of golf have been highlighted this week by the difficulties encountered by the Kazakhstani interpreter on-site at the Open.

After receiving the transcript of a Gary Boyd interview he found himself baffled by a number of issues and asked the Challenge Tour's Press Officer Paul Symes for some clarification.

"Gary says that the rough is thick so sometimes he has to take his medicine," asked the interpreter. "What does this mean? Is he ill?"

Paul paused for a second, appreciated how confusing the phrase must be to a non-golfer and then tried to explain.

The next problem involved, appropriately enough, scrambling.

"What is 'up and down'? He say he kept getting up and down."

Once more Paul could see the problem, but had no clear way of defining the notion in simple terms.

"It means he chipped the ball and putted it."

"What? At the same time?"

"Err, no ... let's see ..."

The art of golf

Golfers are not really the most cultural or artistic types; a golfing aesthete is likely to enjoy the finer points of a backswing than a Van Gogh.

But one of the marshals at Zhailjau this week loves his art, is damn good at it and also loves his golf.

Tom Richards has recently graduated from St Andrew's where he was able to study whilst indulging his love of golf.

He then found himself immersed in the art world of Florence where he met a lady who, he discovered, is one of the senior marshals this week.

Next thing Tom knew he was flying out to Almaty to paint her portrait, play in the Pro-am ("yeah, you beat us into second," he told me) and carry out all sorts of marshalling duties around the course.

He showed me a painting he did of his girlfriend and, despite being neither a genuine aesthete or a golfing aesthete, I can say it was, to my untutored eye, very good.

Taxi troubles

First thing on Saturday morning (well, after having avoided the intriguing option of "gromlette" on the breakfast menu) myself, my new Dutch friend Ruben and Nic Brooks from the Daily Mirror headed out to the Nurtau GC, venue for the first four Kazakhstan Opens.

We needed to take a taxi and had been told that the cabs outside the hotel would ask for 4,000 tenge (the local currency) but that we should offer 2,000 and take 3,000.

As we prepared to start our bartering Ruben, who has just returned from South America, volunteered to conduct business as he had become something of an expert.

"How much to Nurtau?" he asked.

"2,000," came the answer.

Ruben's certainly got the knack we thought.

Until the cabbie proudly delivered us to an office block round the corner from the hotel.

Golf in Kazakhstan

When Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev was in Japan on state duty in the 1990s he discovered that the local politicians prefer to conduct some aspects of business on the golf course. A novice at the game he soon found that he loved it and decided that Almaty needed a course of its own.

So the first incarnation of the Nurtau club saw a nine hole course being built with the expectation of very few members but soon it was obvious that a full eighteen holes was required such was the interest from ex-pats, visiting businessmen and locals.

So the second nine was added, membership rose and in 2004 the club also acquired the services of Konstantine Lifanov, a professional golfer from Russia previously attached to the Moscow Golf and Country Club.

In 2005 golf in the country took a further step forward when it welcomed the Challenge Tour, hosting the first Kazakhstan Open, an event that has since become one of the most popular stops on the schedule.

The country now has over 1,000 golfers, a driving range and a cheap nine hole course near Almaty's city centre, plus a thriving junior programme organised by Lifanov at Nurtau.

With Zhailjau now deemed good enough to host the Open, and a third course - designed by Colin Montgomerie - to be opened in the near future, the golfing community is growing and the wider golfing public worldwide have a new option as a golfing destination.

Nurtau GC

Whereas the Zhailjau is a typical resort course - indeed with the accompanying villas and surrounding building work you sometimes feel you could be in Spain - Nurtau is a parkland layout.

The front nine is tight with the trees always in play, many of them harvesting apples which gives a clue to the origins of the name of the city.

Almaty can be roughly translated as "rich of apples" and as we walked up the fourth hole our host for the day - the afore-mentioned Konstantine Lifanov - proved as much by grabbing two types of the fruit from the overhanging branches.

The apples from the right side of the fairway had a citrus taste whilst the ones on the left were very sweet, but both were delicious.

The other feature of the front nine are the many doglegs which demands not only accuracy but good distance control too. The back nine is far more open but also has, like the front nine, many doglegs and lots of water.

There is one other factor that stands out - the greens are quick and much flatter than the rolling terrain at Zhailjau.

I once read that poor putters like very slopey greens because they can visualise the line much more easily.

That perhaps explains why I putted well on the wild undulations of Zhailjau yet couldn't pick a line on the flatter Nurtau greens that many of the professionals favour.

Konstantine Lifanov

Konstantine is not only the professional at Nurtau; he has also played a pivotal role in the emergence of golf in the country as a whole.

As head of the Kazakhstan Golf Association he has been instrumental in organising the Open, although he admitted that this year the pressure had been eased on him with the event moving to Zhailjau.

He also explained that the change of course takes the tournament closer to the city (which hopefully draws more attention from the population and local media) and it also proves to the world that the country has more than one course capable of holding an important tournament.

In addition to working at the Moscow G&CC Konstantine also coached the Russian youth team and as a consequence he was responsible for the early tuition of the LET player - and currently Russia's highest profile golfer - Maria Verchenova.

Daulet again

As we left the tenth green Konstantine urged us to take a look back at the tee.

There, waving at us, was Daulet, the extraordinary ten-year-old boy we played with in the Pro-am.

We waved back at him and then waited to watch his tee shot.

"Wouldn't it be funny," said Ruben, "if we witnessed his very first hole in one."

As he said it the ball soared into the air, dropped at the front of the green and rolled towards the hole.

"I don't believe it," started someone before the ball slipped agonisingly past the flag and stopped inches from the cup.

When we had stopped laughing, we cheered and clapped his effort and he nonchalantly flapped a hand in our direction before jumping on his buggy to tap-in for birdie.

It was just another example of how he had the touch of a showman.

We asked him to join us. It created a five-ball but, hey, who cares? We were playing with Mr Golf Kazakhstan and The Future of Kazakhstan Golf - if they couldn't get away with it, who could?

It also allowed us to spend another couple of hours in Daulet's engaging company.

Konstantine, who was in stitches almost every time his protégé uttered a word ("He sounds like he has learned all his phrases from a computer game or American TV - it is so funny."), has coached Daulet for two years and explained that his commitment is impressive.

"He spends many hours on the course and also many hours on the range," he said. "He finishes a round and he has so much energy he goes and hits hundreds of balls. Then he hits hundreds of putts. He is amazing."

Does he have genuine potential?

"Well we must be careful, he is only young, but ... yes, I think he does have potential. He loves the game, he has good family, they can help him, he can also play."

He is also very polite - he greeted all of us with a handshake and reserved a bow for his coach.

He ended today's round posing for photographs with us outside the clubhouse and then peering at our contact details after we had written them on a piece of paper for him.

"Excuse me, Matt," he asked me. "Could you write yours again, please? Your hand-writing is not very good."

That made the girls behind the desk giggle.

"But to be honest," he continued, "it is better than Ruben's. He even writes funny numbers as well. What is that?!"

At the end of this year Daulet travels to America to play in an event he qualified for when winning this year's Kazakhstan Junior Open (not last year's as he pointed out that I erroneously reported earlier in the week).

I can't wait to find out how he does.

Matt Cooper