Birdies in Beirut

If Dubai is the new kid on the golfing block, then Lebanon, or the Golf Club of Lebanon to be precise, is the golfing Grandaddy of the Middle East with an interesting history and more than a few tales to tell.

By the early 1960s Beirut was buzzing. The international jet set came to this tiny part of the Levant in their droves and spent their nights gambling away in the famous Casino du Liban and wreaking havoc in the chic bars and nightclubs of the capital. It was by all accounts an agreeabley hedonistic time and it was then that Beirut earned the label,‘ Paris of the East.’ British expatriate members of the club, thinking (correctly) that golf could prosper in such a cosmopolitan city moved the club to its present site routed a an attractive nine hole layout through attractive woodland close to the international airport. Golf blossomed in Lebanon and the club became popular with the idle rich who would play a quick round to alleviate their inevitable hangovers. Stories of after-hours orgies in the expansive clubhouse are still remembered fondly to this day.

On the back of this success, the club initiated plans for a further nine holes to be built, but then disaster struck. From 1975 to 1990, much of Beirut was ravaged by civil war, but the club, despite not getting their additional nine holes until 1985 when there was a brief lull in the fighting, carried on as normal except that most of the regular members were replaced by golf enthusiasts from the battalion of war correspondents who were based in the famous Commodore Hotel a few kilometres away.

Playing golf in a war zone is as dangerous as it sounds and it didn’t get much more dangerous than playing the 440-yard first hole. Running perpendicular to this par-four was a PLO firing range and reports of golfers having to “scurry like rabbits” to avoid stray bullets were commonplace. Every morning the club’s greenkeepers would sweep the fairways, ridding the course of the shrapnel and artillery shells that had accumulated overnight. Up until fairly recently the tail section of an Israeli rocket, which was found on the third green, took pride of place between bottles of Smirnoff and Gibleys on the clubhouse bar. It was a surreal time and the occasional bursts of gunfire from the surrounding neighbourhood was best summed up by Eddie Coates, the former Security Cheif at the British Embassy. “It’s terrible for your putting,” Coates said. “But this is golf, it gets in your blood.”

Today, the Golf Club of Lebanon is a much quieter place, but it has rather lost the grandeur of its pre-war past. Although the clubhouse and off-course facilities have undergone recent renovations (the club’s six clay tennis courts hosted Lebanon’s ultimately unsuceesful Davis Cup campaign in 2005) the course now backs on to some non-descript housing and many of the majestic old trees that used to line the fairways are no more. This being Beirut, however, there is every confidence that the club can rekindle the glory days of more than thirty-five years ago. Beirut buzzes once more and with a little care and attention (and a lot of cold hard cash), the Golf Club of Lebanon can rise again.

 

 

The Golf Club of Lebanon

Ouzai – Beer Hassan

Beirut, Lebanon

Tel: +961 1 826 335-6-7

Website: www.golfclub.org.lb

Email: info@golfclub.org.lb

 

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