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With his polo shirt, white cap and sunglasses, Khashayar Tamadon is dressed for a sport which Iran is not known for: golf. Even more unusual is the Tehran course that he plays on.
Currently hosting Iran’s national championship, the Enghelab golf course has only 13 holes, not 18 like at major country clubs elsewhere.
When the course was built decades ago it had five more holes but over the years the fairways have been eaten away by development. Tehran’s tiny contingent of players feel lucky that they still have 13, but are fearful even more of the course may disappear.
“Although golf is one of the 10 most popular sports in the world and has 100 years of history in Iran, it remains one of the least known here,” Saeed Barati, 39, third-placed in the current tournament, told AFP.
“I hope we won’t completely lose this course which already only has 13 holes,” he said against a backdrop of skyscrapers and mountains, beyond the tree-fringed course.
Barati, who works at the ministry of petroleum in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, is worried because the “sport officials in the country do not have a favourable view” of the game.
Football and wrestling get most of the nation’s attention.
For a few like Tamadon, 44, golf is a passion. Playing in the national championship, he explains how the course ended up with only 13 holes.
– Nibbling away –
The anomaly has nothing to do with superstition or an error by those who conceived the fairways in 1964.
Rather, after the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled Iran’s monarchy, the country’s new leadership nibbled away at the course, declaring it too large for the game’s small number of players.
Buildings from the sports ministry and Olympic committee were constructed on the fairways.
“Initially it was 18 holes, but as obviously golf was not very popular”, other sports, buildings or departments started taking some of the land, said Tamadon, an industrialist.
“So now we have 13 holes.”
Tehran’s club has about 300 members, half of…
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Source : yahoo
