A Second Wave for Bahrain Golf

He wants golf taught and played by far more young Bahrainis.

He said the game had deep roots in Riffa and was good for health too. ‘It is a sport of walking and movement,’ he told The Daily Tribune.

One of the new courses is being built near Zallaq for Bahrain Golf Club. It will give juniors a place to learn, train and work towards Bahrain’s youth and senior teams.

Many of the youngsters coming through are children of former players, Mr Abdul Latif said.

A second 18-hole championship course is planned at Rashid Equestrian and Horseracing Club in Al Raffa, with Spanish golfer Sergio Garcia designing it.

For Mr Abdul Latif, the case for spreading golf also lies in its place in local life.

Men from East Riffa were among the Bahrainis who learned the game from foreign players in the early oil years.

They worked as caddies, carried bags and watched closely.

‘They learned golf from carrying the bags,’ Mr Abdul Latif told The Daily Tribune. ‘They learned the rules, they learned English, and after some time they became better than the people who had taught them.’

Getting hold of golf clubs was harder.

So Riffa players turned to local welders, who made them from iron.

Mr Abdul Latif said his father was one of the craftsmen.

‘There were no clubs available like there are today,’ he said. ‘They would go to the welders in Riffa and have the clubs made from iron. My father used to make them.’

The game had already been recorded in Bahrain by the early 1930s.

Major General Abdullah Al Kaabi writes in Golf in Bahrain… A Success Story We Tell that there is no agreed date for the first game, though Bahrainis knew golf from the early years of oil exploration.

He traces archive references to 1931.

After oil was found in commercial quantities at Well No. 1 near Jebel Dukhan on June 2, 1932, workers poured into the area and golf became one of the pastimes at the oil camp.

By 1933, a British Political Agent report recorded two golf clubs in Bahrain, one in Manama and another at Bapco’s camp.

Another early nine-hole course lay in the Gudaibiya-Adliya area, according to the recollections of the late golfer Mohammed Habal, who grew up in Gudaibiya.

He remembered it near Um Al Shoom spring and close to the old shoreline, with no grass greens and holes cut into the natural ground. Its exact site has not been pinned down.

A nine-hole course in Riffa Valley formally opened on January 4, 1937, drawing the game closer to the area that later became closely tied to Bahraini golf.

Awali Golf Club followed in 1952 under Bapco.

The courses themselves bore little resemblance to today’s grass fairways, with sand and natural ground doing much of the work.

Mr Abdul Latif called Riffa the home of Bahrain’s golf culture, with the game passing through families over the years.

He said His Majesty the King was a keen golfer and a strong supporter of the sport, while the late Shaikh Abdullah bin Salman Al Khalifa and other senior figures also played.

The two new courses will give young players a very different start from the Riffa men who learned by carrying British golfers’ bags and using iron clubs made in neighbourhood workshops.

Nearly a century on, councillors want young Bahrainis playing the game again in numbers.