For a provinciano studying in the city, weekends mean watching movies or going shopping. If you are rich that is.
For the middle class promdis, weekends mean playing basketball with fellow dormitory mates. That’s what life was when I was a college dormitory resident at the good old Cocofed Dorm inside the Ateneo de Davao University complex. We would play almost the entire day on Sundays against other promdis and locals residing in nearby boarding houses around the Jacinto area.
Among my dorm mates were now lawyer Robert De Leon and builder Engr. Ludwig Van Ledesma. Robert helped me though my Algebra and anything numerics subjects in college as a senior dorm resident. Ludwig was basketball player you would love to have as a teammate when the betting is higher than piso piso.
Robert went on to be with Philippine Airlines until he became a lawyer. We had interactions with celebrated cases which I chronicled as a journalist. Ludwig became my neighbor in El Rio Vista and although he also eventually went into golf, we never played together as much as my other neighbor and Edge Davao contributor Chito Malabanan.
Some years back, Ludwig met an accident that almost claimed his life. He was on his way to Apo Golf and Country Club one morning when the container truck in front of his car on the ascent to Diversion Road separated with its 20-foot van. The block of steel, weighing tons weight including the cargoes inside, landed smack on the poor automobile. If you are looking at the flattened car, you wouldn’t hesitate a bit to think the drive would have survived.
But lo and behold, Ludwig emerged from the crushed car and without checking on himself, opened the boot to see if his golf bag, of all things, was still there. The golf bag and all his clubs were smothered to smithereens and his car looked like it was smashed ten times by wrecking ball.
Ludwig escaped the accident virtually unscathed.
Just like that, golf is back throbbing like a lovestruck teenager.
Beginning with the return of the Durian Tee golf tournament last week, Davao City’s golf scene is more than just alive and kicking. This weekend, the first ever Recovery Golf Championship takes centerstage at the Rancho Palos Golf and Country Club and the South Pacific Golf Estates.
A whopping bonanza with over P10 million await the winners in the two-day tournament and the raffles.
Ludwig has envisioned the tournament to be the biggest ever this year and it is looking like one.
A lot of things have happened since the day golf was sidelined by the pandemic and now, back to its glory days. Ludwig, too, from the days he almost lost his life and lost his golf set to the near fatal mishap.
Life indeed is full of mystery. Just like golf. You hit your ball and it either lands on the fairway, in the rough, in the sand, or in the water.
If it lands in the hole, you land in heaven.
