by Fiona Keating

Tryall Club, Jamaica

But for many, golf is a way of life, a game for fanatics, popularised by younger players such as Tiger Woods. This champion golfer comes to Jamaica for rest and relaxation, not for a busman's holiday and eye witness accounts say he never picks up a putter in all his time here.

Half Moon Golf Course

Tee time
     The Half Moon golf course, a par 72 championship course, designed by the course architect Robert Trent Jones Snr., has a reputation for being challenging and beautiful. There are 7,119 yards of difficult driving areas, plenty of bunkers, dog legs and undulating greens. You can either use a golf cart or walk around the course.
      It's also a member of Jack Nicklaus' Great Golf Resorts of the World. The Half Moon also has a David Leadbetter Golf Academy if you want to improve your putting or driving. Golf is a game which takes years to perfect. It's practice, practice, practice. There's always room for improvement in your grip, body alignment, stance and posture. To prepare yourself for the real thing, there's a putting green and driving range.
      It's best to rise early when tackling this 18-hole course as it's a sweltering 86 degrees by 9am. It's a good holiday palm-tree lined resort course; a stunning place to play golf and lose a lot of body fluids, so keep drinking from the water coolers supplied at every hole or sample the iced coconut water provided by a lady who comes by with a surprising selection of snacks. And it seems very odd that you can eat Pringles in the Caribbean.
      The caddies are probably the most knowledgeable about the course. They are full of advice about how to play, with suggestions on which iron to use. More experienced golfers may resent being told how to play, so you can always tell them to back off. However, useful information they can provide is whether the green is fast or slow and also distances from the hole.
      Caddies get to meet many nationalities as golf courses are a great place to people watch and compare how golfers from different countries react to hitting a bad shot. Apparently, the English are fairly polite in their expletives, muttering 'Bloody hell!' The Germans say 'Nein! Nein! Nein!' While Jamaicans swear without reserve. And the Japanese mournfully cry 'Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!'
      According to the caddies, the Japanese pick up golf extremely quickly, especially the women. The worst players are the Germans, Austrians and Swiss. It's the puzzling kind of behaviour that student psychologists should write a 1,000-word dissertation on.

Half Moon Hotel

The art of pampering
     For long-suffering golf widows and even widowers, the Half Moon has a spa where partners can get away from their golf-bore partners. There's the jet-lag soak and massage and the intriguing Old-fashioned Jamaica bush bath, in which herbs, roots, leaves and fruit are placed in the bath. Or you could just wash your golf shoes in the bath, which have probably amassed all of these things while trudging along on the golf course.

The White Witch

      The White Witch at the Ritz-Carlton Rose Hall is the newest and probably the most challenging and contemporary of all the golf courses in Jamaica. It opened in August 2000 and winds through the mountains of Jamaica's 4,000-acre Rose Hall Plantation. The White Witch is carved out of 600 acres, with rolling countryside that showcase panoramic Caribbean mountain views.
      It's pretty hard for all but the most fanatical of golfers to concentrate on their Teitlists rather than gazing open-mouthed at the azure Caribbean Sea, which is a powerful presence, as 16 out of the 18 holes have sea views.
      The Half Moon is designed by Robert Von Hagge and Rick Baril, who are responsible for creating over 250 golf courses all over the world. The course is very testing for players to keep their eye on the ball as all this breathtaking scenery can be very distracting.
      There are wide fairways but if you miss them, the ball will drop into deep chasms and even the sharp-eyed golf caddies will never find them. Although challenging, it's possible for experienced golfers as well as beginners to play side by side. The multiple tees allow the low handicapper to use their skill and prowess to get across a yawning ravine to reach the green, while there are tees which help the shorter hitter to get there as well.
      It's a place to keep golf-ball manufacturers happy as you can kiss goodbye to many Jamaican dollars' worth of balls. On the first hole, which is also the hardest, there are water hazards and large areas of woodland to keep clear of. Caddies here are given the high falutin name of golf concierges. That's because they do everything but wipe your nose and play the shot for you.
      Their duties include cleaning the clubs, raking the bunkers, repairing divots and ball marks, recommending favourable target lines and strategies for each hole. Not content with that, they also run like gazelles around the course, which in near 90-degree heat is extraordinary to watch.
      Because the course is so large, the golf concierges communicate with each other by means of hand signals. Swinging their hands low in a scissors motion means the ball is safe but not in a favourable position. Hands in the air means the group ahead of you is not safe, a kind of semaphore shout of 'Fore!'

Sinister past
     The course is named after Annee Palmer, the White Witch of Rose Hall. According to folklore, Annee learned black magic in Haiti, was possessed of supernatural powers and was adept at casting evil spells. She was also something of a nymphomaniac, running through three husbands who all died suddenly. Rumours ran rife that Annee had poisoned them all, burying them under palm trees.
      She was also a cruel mistress to the slaves, especially those who were her lovers, whom she flogged to death in order to silence them. However, the slaves took their revenge by plotting her death. In 1831, she was found dead in her bedroom, strangled by a slave lover. But that wasn't the end of Annee Palmer as many claim to have seen her ghost wandering the halls of Rose Hall.
      It's a shame that such atmospheric stories have little basis on reality, which is much more mundane and less of a re-working of Gone With The Wind. The tale was very loosely based on a Rose Palmer, the first mistress of Rose Hall, who did indeed have four husbands. However, the true story is that she died at the grand old age of 72 in the 23rd year of her marriage to John Palmer and was by all accounts a devoted wife.

Tryall

      Fifteen miles west of Montego Bay is the Tryall, a 6,221-yard par 72 golf course, Jamaica's most famous and considered one of the best in the world. But it's looking a little past its heyday, a trifle frayed around the edges and there are plans for renovations in the next few years.
      Roadworks are also in progress which can be noisy and distracting for golfers, not to mention dangerous to the road workers who often find themselves ducking from the barrage of golf balls flying their way. This former sugar plantation was designed by Ralph Plummer and has hosted the LPGA's Jamaica Classic and the Johnnie Walker World Championship.
      The course winds along the beach and into the hillside. While some of the holes seem wide open and ready to accept your longest drive, beware of the treacherous trade winds which can either carry your shot way over its target or swing it widely to the left or right. Ask the golf pros here and they'll tell you that strategy and position are the keys to a successful round.

Getting into the swing
     The first hole is an elevated green and with the wind at your back, achieving a respectable birdie shouldn't be too much of a problem. Watch out however, for the green is hard, fast and unforgiving. The fourth hole is the most memorable hole, a par four with a sharp uphill dogleg left. To reach the green in two, you must keep close to the left tree line. Take care not to slice to the left as the stone wall is out of bounds and the tree at the edge of the ditch has caused grief to many.
      The fifth hole takes you to the highest point of the golf course with a fantastic view of the sea, as well as a cooling breeze, which is very welcome as temperatures can reach the 90s. You'll need a strong drive to carry across the bunker in front of the green, which is quite long. A pin back right usually means one more club and always take the wind into account.
      Jamaicans love a good ghost story, so most places have a resident ghoul. In a town called Struie, a British regiment was ambushed by rebel slaves, and if you listen very closely or have had a few Red Stripes too many, you can here the sound of clashing swords which echo into the darkness.
      The Tryall is no different. The slave quarters were built in the area of the 12th tee and in a secluded wooded area is the slave graveyard. People have seen ghosts walking along the side of the road nearby and swear they were not under the influence after celebrating a golf victory at the time.

Foul play
     You can't come to Jamaica without thinking of its history of slavery and many of the golf courses are built on former plantations. The plantation owner of Rose Hall for example owned over 2,000 slaves. Wealthy landlords, many of them British, amassed huge fortunes and lived in luxury thanks to the profits of slave labour.
      The British brought in thousands of slaves from Africa to manage the sugar plantations and by the 18th century, Jamaica had become a centre of the slave trade, with a population at that time of around 300,000 slaves and 20,000 whites. Slaves were treated with brutality, often branded and tortured. Not surprisingly, slave revolts were fairly common and eventually the British were forced to abolish slavery in 1834.
      The Three Palms course, soon to be renamed Cinammon Hill at Wyndhams Rose Hall offers mountain, island and ocean views. Designed by golf course architects von Hagge, Smelek and Baril, this 6,637 yard par 71 layout has been renovated in the past two years. You can either walk or take a golf cart here, but careful of the steep hills as those buggies can take corners pretty fast.
      The course seems to be a mixture of the White Witch and the Tryall, a blend between contemporary and traditional. And this is where the course stands out, offering a variety of play for the golfer. The holes all have names, such as the fourth hole which is appropriately-named Dead and Gone, featuring an enormous water hazard to steer clear of.
      The 11th hole is called Takoo's Revenge, which apparently was the name of the slave who strangled Annee Palmer. It's an impressive dog leg right, with seven bunkers and surrounded by thick woodland.

Rafting in Jamaica

      Of course there's much more to do in Jamaica than play golf. There's rafting on the Martha Brae river, diving, snorkelling, hiking, sailing, horse-back riding and deep-sea fishing. But there aren't many places on earth where you can find golf courses to see egrets, mongeese or John Crow buzzards circling in the sky and where the caddies shout 'Jah! Jah!' to encourage your shot towards its target.

Links
www.wyndham.com
www.tryallclub.com
www.halfmoon.com.jm
www.wyndhamjamaica.com/sports.html