Golfers face one heck of a sandtrap
Soldiers play for pride, Tim Hortons ball cap at Kandahar Air Field Abbey
By DENE MOORE The Canadian Press
Mon. Jul 27 - 4:46 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Unlike the real thing, there was no threat of rain Sunday — or even much hope of respite from the searing desert heat as golfers braved the fairway at the Kandahar Canadian Open.
Most golfers waited until the relentless sun of southern Afghanistan began to set before venturing onto the greens at the NATO base in Kandahar to tackle a mini-replica of the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ont., where the soggy real Canadian Open was being staged.
Aside from the weapons slung across shoulders and the military uniforms, the weather also set the Kandahar tournament apart.
"We just have 50-degree heat to deal with," said Bill Pigden of Winnipeg, a retired major who is now a civilian manager at the Canadian Forces’ Personnel Support Agency at the base, where morale is one of his duties.
It took Pigden, tournament co-chairman Gilles Langlois of Kingston, Ont., and a host of volunteers three days to lay out KAF Abbey, which stands for Kandahar Air Field.
The Royal Canadian Golf Association provided technical information about the Glen Abbey course, which they laid out in miniature.
The 18-hole course was set out in a small field in the middle of "the boardwalk," the centre of recreational life on the sprawling base, and it was complete with artificial turf greens.
