SLICE Shanghai – miscellaneous pages

Atten ... shun!
Caddies line up like
soldiers before the
start of the first
Kabul Desert Open.
warlord who once controlled 1,500
holy warriors in the hills around the
course, is to inject funding to build an
entire town – complete with a marina,
luxury hotel, Mediterranean-style
villas and ski complex - close to the
club, rebirth has, so far, been modest.
But progress is underway.
A senior United Nations' employee
has donated second-hand clubs and
balls. Though there is no 19th hole
(Afghans are forbidden to buy alcohol
under the current constitution), the
club already has 300 members, and
more than 100 of them are female.
Under the Taliban, women were
forbidden from playing sports or
entering a sporting club, as well as
from working outside the home, to
study or to wear colourful clothes.
AND THE KABUL DESERT Open,
played in September 2005 in aid of a
local orphanage, can also be seen as
a genuine step in the right direction.
The event attracted 20 teams – mostly
consisting of diplomats, aid workers,
security personnel and businessmen.
An advisory sheet of “special
techniques” for completing the nine
holes counselled players to “attack
the course” and to “play aggressively”,
and players teed off from portable
squares of fake grass to heartfelt cries
of “Shabash” – meaning “Bravo”,
or “Well played” – from club staff,
journalists and assorted well-wishers.
The tournament’s eventual winners
were Americans Sam Hendricks,
35, and Jiffer Bourguignon, 28, who
also work with the UN. And though
entrants had been warned they would
be playing “at their own risk”; though
many players brought along their own
caddies armed with machine guns;
and despite a distant burst of gunfire
heard during play, event organizers
were delighted to report only one
casualty. Hendricks’ drive off the
fourth tee struck a stray goat.
22 SLICEShanghai