Be wary of Thailand golf course superintendents! They can cost you strokes.
Thai golf course designers create fair, but challenging courses. However, the Thai superintendents sometimes play tricks on you, especially with tee boxes. I have seen at least one and in most cases up to 50% of tee boxes on golf courses in Thailand be aligned to the out-of-bounds or hazard rather than the fairway.
Take for example the Canyon Course at Blue Canyon Country Club in Phuket. Look at where the tees point on hole 11, straight into the woods on the left side. Then take hole 14. Yes that is the par 3 that is in practically every advertisement about golf in Thailand. On that hole it is hard enough hitting onto the island green. Why does the course superintendent insist on placing the tee markers so that a straight shot will fly well left of the green and right into the lake?
This is not the only example. I was playing at Phoenix Golf Club in Pattaya last week and no sooner did my foursome get to the first tee of the Mountain Course then I found the tee markers aimed way to the right and into the fairway of the ninth hole. This was a poor start indeed.
There's nothing in the rules of golf that says course superintendents must help you. The way a superintendent mows the grass doesn't always give you a true aim down the course for example, so why should the tee markers? Take some time to study the hole before teeing off to assess the situation and select the true target line.
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