Lahore, the name itself evokes magic. A place of culture, recreation, great educational institutions, superb cuisine, sporting excellence and so much more, it has since ages something for the golfers too. There are excellent golfing facilities at various venues, but none surpasses the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club with its picturesque and superbly maintained par 72, eighteen holes course.
Be they the passionate golfers of Lahore or the visitors, this historic golf course formerly the property of Railways, is the place to be. Approaching over 10 years of age under its visionary new management, who with their passion for excellence have improved the facilities beyond belief, one finds that this 18 holes layout is now endowed with features that are most regal and immensely pleasing even for those whose hobby is criticism. The lush, mature nature of the layout has its own story of development to tell and as for the biggest names that have trodden its well maintained fairways the comments can only impress.
Established as Railways Golf Club way back about a hundred years ago, the Royal Palm’s driving range is a big facilitator for those seeking to improve their golfing skills and as for those who want to promote excellence in competitive golf, the course is loaded with challenges which perhaps only the skilled ones can appreciate and understand – and hone their skill-set to challenge the best of the best.
At 6,666 yards from the championship markers, the course is one of the toughest tests of golf in the region, certainly the best in the province of Punjab which has many other excellent facilities as well, and is rated as a course that presents an exacting examination requiring meticulous shot placing accuracy due to the demanding fairways. On quite a few holes the rough is virtually unplayable. This of course means that wayward driving is penalized. Even power players like Shabbir Iqbal, Muhammad Munir and Shahid Javed Khan are constantly under restraint and on many holes they have to opt for caution.
The best in Pakistan
In a periodic review of Golf Courses around the world carried out by the Golf Digest under the title, Planet Golf, the Royal Palm Golf and Country Club Golf Course has been ranked as the best golf course in Pakistan (Ref Golf Digest, May 2012, Vol 63, No 5,Page 124).The ranking of Royal Palm Golf Course is a part of the individual rankings of golf courses in 203 countries based on a large global panel survey involving 609 panelists, 11,426 individual course evaluations, with input from 30 international editions of Golf Digest.
A significant feature that emerged through this survey was that growth of golf in the USA has stalled and in 2011 there was a net loss of 140 courses in America. The survey also highlights that internationally a lot of exciting new prominent golf courses have come up, like Yas Links in Abu Dhabi, Barnbough Lost Farm in Australia, Castle Stuart in Scotland, Black Mountain in Thailand and many others. Then there are other countries which have joined the league of golf nations by adding their first golf course and include Belarus, Equatorial Guinea and Sudan. However some countries still have no golf course, the most populous being Iraq (32 million inhabitants) and Yemen (24 million). The survey also states that Planet Golf is a world of 32,515 golf courses, played and beloved by 60 million people who are proud to call themselves golfers.
As for Royal Palm Golf Course, it has played host to numerous national and regional golf tournaments including the National Amateur, Pakistan Open, the SAARC Golf Championship. In these competitions, the national teams and players from South Asia participated. Soon Royal Palm hopes to host an Asian Tour Event in Lahore.
