This round was Fidel Castro's way of demonstrating his scorn for the
bourgeoisie. But the game he loathed survived his rule, though plans to
make the island a golfer's paradise have foundered. Leonard Doyle
reports from Havana
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Marlene Negrene stood on the first tee of Havana's golf club, driver in
hand and looking forward to a pleasurable nine holes to be followed
perhaps by a cocktail at the Hoyo 19. "I love it here," said the former
lecturer in English at Havana's prestigious university. "It's where I
meet interesting people."
So fond is Ms Negrene of Havana's only golf course that she quit her
university job to become the club's caddy master, an unusual career move
even by Cuban standards. "The pay is about the same but the hours are
better," she said. Strict government wage control keeps heart surgeons
and street-sweepers on similar salaries, of about $20 to $40 a month.
The club might have been a Hollywood film set from the 1950s, with
elegantly dressed golfers walking to the sun-dappled clubhouse from a
car-park dotted with vintage Studebakers and Chevrolets. Families sat by
an open-air swimming pool ordering sandwiches.
Set against the crumbling reality of life in Cuba even for a university
lecturer, with food and other basics still rationed, Ms Negrene's odd
career choice started to make sense.
Founded by British expatriates as the Rovers Athletic Club in the 1920s,
it is Havana's sole surviving golf course. For the first 20 years of
Cuba's revolution, tolerated by the Castro regime, it hung on
unobtrusively, with Home Counties accents predominating in the clubhouse
and on the fairways. At the height of the Cold War, it was an ideal
watering-hole and listening-post for diplomats and spies to pick up
gossip over mojitos.
With only nine holes to work with, the club has placed an extra tee at
every hole to make it possible to play a full 18. Caddies cost $5 for a
round, making more money than most Cubans, including Ms Negrene. But the
greens are a bit of a problem because they can become infested with
anthills. And thieves kept stealing the flagpoles so they have been
replaced by branches with white rags attached.
The return of Cuba's golfing glory days remains a gleam in the eyes of
the mostly British and Canadian investors who have been encouraged by
the government of Raul Castro to build luxury resorts. Foster and
Partners developed plans for a marina and golf resort on the island's
north coast, with three 18-hole courses and 1,500 upscale apartments. A
spokeswoman said yesterday that it was just a feasibility study.
Other grand projects have been equally short-lived, despite the
enthusiasm of the Cuban regime to see hordes of European and North
American golfers forking out hard currency. Tourism in Cuba is run by
the military and Raul Castro, who ran the country's defence forces
before becoming Cuba's President, is said to have endorsed more than a
dozen upscale golf projects.
But the devil has been in the details and, because Cuba does not
recognise the rights of individuals to buy and sell property, it has
75-year leases for foreigners like those on offer in Dubai, which also
bars foreign ownership of property.
But whether it is because international investors are reluctant to build
resorts that might one day be nationalised by the government or because
the Cuban government is wary of social upheaval if it allows luxury
apartments to be built for foreigners, most of the golf projects have
remained in blueprint form. From the outset of the revolution, Fidel
Castro and his allies set about destroying Cuba's legacy of fine golf
courses which had catered to the gangsters, gamblers other high-rollers
who treated the Caribbean island like their private playground. What
started as a popular uprising against Batista's thugs was soon being
transformed by Fidel and his younger brother Raul, into a clone of
Soviet-style communism, with collectivisation, land seizures and mass
expropriations. With the exception of Rovers Athletic,
all of Cuba's golf clubs, including several gems designed by the US
architect Donald Ross, were occupied by the military.
But in late 1962, shortly after the missile crisis threatened to engulf
the world, Fidel Castro made a grand gesture aimed at mollifying US
public opinion. He invited his fellow revolutionary Ernesto "Che"
Guevara for a game of golf intending to send a signal of friendship to
President John F Kennedy. Fidel and Che showed up in military fatigues
and boots with photographers and reporters in tow. They stomped around
Cuba's historic course at Colinas de Villareal, but their efforts to
thumb their noses at the bourgeois sport turned serious as the
competitive juices flowed. Both men were sons of privileged families and
Che had worked as a caddy in his native Argentina while going to medical
school.
The Cuban journalist Jose Lorenzo Fuentes, Fidel's personal reporter,
was to cover the game. It would be his last day at work. Now in exile in
Florida, he told The Wall Street Journal: "Castro told me that the
headline of the story the next day would be 'President Castro challenges
President Kennedy to a friendly game of golf'." But neither man liked to
lose and the game became intensely competitive. He said Che "played with
a lot of passion", and he felt obliged to truthfully record the game's
outcome. He wrote for the communist party daily Granma that Fidel had
lost. The next day he was sacked and fled the country.
It was all downhill for golf after that ill-fated game. President
Kennedy, the best golfer to occupy the White House, did not take up the
offer. Instead, he tightened the already tough economic blockade, which
to the fury of Cubans remains in force. Fidel ordered military barracks
to be built on most courses, although the scene of his defeat by Che was
earmarked for an arts college, which never got off the ground.
But somehow Rovers Athletic hung on for 20 more years, the British and
Cuban flags flying alongside with portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and
Fidel hanging inside the mahogany-lined clubhouse. Even after the
revolution, those Cubans who could afford it remained eligible to join.
As Cuba sent its armed forces to fight wars in Angola and elsewhere, the
club hosted endless rounds of golf tournaments and dinner dances. Fidel
was made honorary president and would occasionally hold discreet talks
with foreign dignitaries on the putting-green.
Then, in April 1980, everything turned sour when Fidel announced that
anyone who wanted to leave Cuba was free to do so. Thousands of Cubans
poured into the the Peruvian embassy seeking asylum. This was followed
by a huge exodus by boat.
It was beginning of the end for Rovers Athletic, because many who fled
were Cuban members. The Cuban authorities nationalised the club,
declaring that it had been overrun by "antisocial elements". Cuban
membership of the club fell from 200 to about 20 and the remaining
members were put under surveillance.
The foreign members, mostly diplomats, suddenly had to contend with the
Cuban secret police keeping a close eye on the place. That's how things
have remained for the past 28 years and the club, tucked in the middle
of an industrial zone on the way to the airport, remains a relic of old
times. Tourists rarely go there, and it took a taxi-driver half an hour
of driving around rutted tracks to find it.
Back in the caddy house, Ms Negrene recalled how Diego Maradona used to
visit the club when he was recuperating from surgery in Cuba a few years
ago. The club's roster also includes Robert Vesco, a fugitive financier
who the US would dearly like to get its hands on. "He has not been
around lately," Ms Negrene said. "I love it here," she added. "The
members are nice and they bring me books, One Hundred Years of Solitude,
Hemingway, lots of things, I have a nice life and plenty of time to read."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cubas-golf-revolution-1230062.html
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