It is hard to believe that the time has gone round so quickly and that it was time to hold what has now become the 5th Annual Jaa Memorial Cup for the caddies here in Khao Kheow. For those who may not know it, Jaa was caddy No. 065 at Khao Kheow for many years until her untimely death at the very young age of twenty six years when she contracted dengue fever from a mosquito bite. Jaa was a beautiful young lady and as well as being an excellent caddy she was also a very accomplished golfer.
Jaa’s mother, who is also an excellent caddy and a good golfer still works at Khao Kheow and plays in this competition every year. The contest is confined to the caddies from Khao Kheow, all of whom would have been very good friends of Jaa.
This year forty four ladies turned out in an attempt to get their names on what has become a very coveted annual trophy. And for the fifth year in a row we had a different winner, which will give encouragement to all the other ladies to keep on trying and maybe next year it will be their turn.
The competition is medal/stroke and as anyone who has ever played here will know, this is a very difficult course for that kind of format and this year it was played on the A and B nines. Again, as in the past years, the standard of golf was very high and what was even more impressive was that the fourballs went around in three and a half hours, which should be a lesson to a lot of us as to how golf should be played.
The formula and scoring was done by the management of Khao Kheow who deserve great credit for all the work they put in to organizing and running this competition and also for giving such a big discount on both the green fee and the golf carts and for the beautiful meal afterwards.
This year the trophy was awarded to the best gross, which was won by a caddy with the very appropriate number of 001, this being Sompis Sam-ang-in who went round in seventy four shots, two over par, which off a handicap of four was a net seventy. Brilliant golf on this course and a deserved winner!
First runner-up was Sukunya, Caddy No 005 with a net sixty nine off a nine handicap and second runner-up was Prakaidao, Caddy No 123 with a net seventy two.
The four near pins were won by Rungaroon Pungsriklao on A9, Yupa Ponpaiparn on A5, Panita Srisuk on B3 and Nitchapa Panmuan on B8, while the long drives went to Sukanya Sam-ang-in on A2 and Ladda Ssingsena on B2.
To give an indication of the standard of golf these ladies played, our group from the Tara Court were out just behind them and even taking into consideration that the ladies were playing off forward tees, not one of us managed to hit our drives even near as far as some of these ladies hit them and not one of us came even near where the near pin markers were, but we still had a lovely day and joined the ladies for a meal and the presentation in the clubhouse afterwards.
Alec Hoare from The Dusit Thani College Pattaya had done most of the work in organizing this competition and unfortunately due to work commitments he wasn’t able to join us for the golf, but he did manage to make it for the meal and the presentation afterwards.
