Thieves here have found a new source of income – selling aluminium hole liners from a golf course here. 

Twelve aluminium hole liners or better known as golf cups were stolen from the Royal Johor Country Club yesterday. 

Club acting general manager Majid Manjit Abdullah, who has been a golfer for more than 20 years, said this was the first time he has ever heard of such type of theft. 

“The thief or thieves must really be desperate,” said Majid. 

“Each hole liner costs about RM128. They are imported from the United States in compliance with US Golf Association regulations,” he ad-ded. 

2/14/2006 6:47:15 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

Getting into the spirit of Valentine's day the BBC have come up with some loving limericks for some of the UK's sporting stars....

Jose Mourinho to himself
Boro are red
Chelsea are blue
They gave us a hiding
But I still love you.

Steven Gerrard to girlfriend Alex
I do love you, la
But I really despair
When you spend all me money
On clothes you don't wear

Freddie Flintoff to wife Rachel
You've given me one child,
There's one on the way
But the lads have all asked
If you can hang on till May.

Robbie Fowler to Liverpool
You were my first love,
Of that there's no doubt
I'll get you a goal
Before the year's out

Big Dunc to Mrs Ferguson
They're all out to get me
I swear that it's true
But at least I can spend
The next month with you.

2/14/2006 10:56:19 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

'The Chinese captial will launch a geological investigation on environment around golf courses and gas stations, and then built three to five shafts around them to monitor water and earth conditions, the Beijing Times quoted the circular of the municipal geological prospecting bureau as saying Wednesday.

Most of golf courses in Beijing were built during the 1980s and 1990s near rivers and reservoirs, without taking into account the impacts on environment.

Widespread use of herbicide and pesticide at these courses has deteriorated geological environment.'

www.chinadaily.com.cn

2/9/2006 12:52:43 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0] 

I went out and hit some balls today, at flags, with a pencil and card in my pocket. The 2006 revolution has begun!!

January on these shores can be a bitter experience, so I confined my golfing to the driving range and a solid month of tweaking and blister inducing discipline. The one flaw about the range, however, is that the fairways are pretty wide, in fact there is no fairway, there's no rough either and there's no nervous chipping over bunkers and the like.

It's all very well beating balls and working on your game (I even had a lesson - I have 'floppy hands at takeaway') but you can't really assess how you're playing. Your head might be right, technique may be spot on, but the one hole the 'rebuild speculum' can't see up is the one 450 yards away round the dogleg.

Two things inspired me to get out on course. Tiger Woods and tapas. 

I watched Tiger at Dubai 'playing badly' and still winning in a play off. Say what you like about the fella, and I'm not exactly running the fan club, but he knows how to win. Sat watching him (8am GMT) I thought 'Balls to it' I can do that and headed up to the course.

This is where the tapas comes in. Not exactly orthodox but hey, I was on my own. The night before I went out to a Spanish restaurant trying to educate my little sister's palate and had a huge selection of tapas. It was wonderful and I heartily recommend it to all, but something was said about how the meal was 'a series of little good things but the whole dinner was spectacular' (she's very eloquent for 15). Herein was my new golfing analogy. Golf, when you break it down is one hole of good things replicated 18 times. You could go further and say, one good swing replicated x times etc. The important thing is that you just try one little good thing at a time and keep trying little good things and then you walk off at the end thinking 'that was something spectacular'. I beat my handicap (just) with a 79.

So my advice for 2006? Think Tigers and tapas.

Web bloke Shaun

2/5/2006 9:02:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [0]