New Bali golfcourse offers Challenge, recreation

New Bali golfcourse offers Challenge, recreation

By Arif Suryobuwono

TABANAN, BALI (JP): The Tanah Lot temple will eventually have a state-of-the-art neighbor, whose presence kindled a great deal of controversy last year due to its close proximity to the Hindu sanctuary, considered as one of the six most holy temples in Bali.

Unlike this seawater-abraded temple of the Tabanan regency, which has poisonous black sea snakes as its guards, the neighbor, a 60-hectare golf course, will have satpam (security officers) watchful at its gateways.

And while the Balinese traditionally frequent the mossy seaside temple with offerings to the gods, people next door will be busily swinging clubs, hitting white balls, searching where they land and driving them into one of the 18 holes of the par-72 links with a four-hectare driving range.

The layout is part of the 121-hectare Bali Nirwarna Resort, which will boast a five-star, 292-room hotel, 190 timeshare suits, 316 resort homes, 152 villas, a thalassotherapy spa, four outdoor tennis courts, two badminton courts and two air- conditioned squash courts.

What's unusual in the new course is the use of rice terraces as roughs. World number two golfer, Greg Norman, might have been thinking of the 12th hole at the Augusta National Golf Club Course in Augusta, Georgia, when he designed the course's 163- meter 12th.

They are both short par 3, though Augusta's, covering a length of 141.7 meter, is shorter.

Both are also situated in the west but the Balinese hole will offer more breathtaking sunsets since golfers overlook the Indian Ocean, with the Tanah Lot temple about 500 meters in front of it, a little to the left.

While the American hole boasts "hidden hazards", its Balinese counterpart, with the deceitful rise and fall of the wind, caused by the trees on the hillside behind the green and tee shots over the windy Indian Ocean, will by no means be less notorious.

What could make the 163-meter 12th hole more harrowing is the three to five-meter high sloping coastline, bordering the river mouth which tears apart the 12th's narrow putting surface from its cliff-top green.

If completed by the middle of next year, the Bali Nirwarna Resort Golf Course will be the fourth course in Bali after the Bali Handara Course in Bedugul, the Bali Golf and Country Club in Nusa Dua and the Denpasar Golf Club in Denpasar.

And it will also be the fifth course in Indonesia designed by Norman. The other four are the recently completed Riverside Course in Bogor, the Dago Pakar Resort in Bandung, West Java and the Tering Bay Resort on Batam island.

Joint venture

The US$324 million Bali Nirwarna Resort is 20 percent owned by the Bakrie Investindo and Bakrie Nusantara Corp. Both are subsidiaries of the widely-diversified, Jakarta-based Bakrie Group. Its British partner, Timeswitch Investment Limited, owns the remaining 80 percent.

Norman, tight-lipped when asked how much he was paid for the design, said that in his design, he tried to make sure of the balance of the 18 holes. He added that he had a strong belief in maintaining the environment the best he could.

John A. Pirtle III, the resort's president director, told The Jakarta Post that the course is now being constructed at a cost of US$12 million, exclusively of land appropriation, by PT Flora Tjipta Sarana, a subsidiary of real estate developer PT Bangun Tjipta Sarana.

The entire resort complex will be completed by November or December next year and the construction of the hotel will be started no later than April next year, Pirtle added.

Pirtle said the course's membership fee has not yet been determined but it would perhaps amount to about US$4,000 a year to make it as competitive as that of other golf courses in Indonesia.

Furor

The resort's development, started with a ground-breaking ceremony in November 1993, was halted following a furor raised by students of the local state-run university Udayana on Jan. 20 last year.

Development was finally resumed last September after the government, the Golkar ruling party and the Armed Forces faction at the House of Representatives supported the project, saying that opposition to the project had been stirred by rival investors and had been highly politicized.

Anton Setianto, president of Bakrie Investindo, said the project had obtained a land use permit, certificates of analysis of the environmental impacts and an analysis of the social impacts.

"Results of those analyses have been approved by the Indonesian Hindu Council," Setianto added.

Pirtle assured that the course as well as the entire resort is environmentally friendly. Around 60 percent of the resort will be an open-spaced area and the 20-hectare of original rice terraces will remain on the course, where local farmers will be allowed to tend and harvest them, he said.

Pirtle said water for irrigating the course would come from several creeks which run through the course and from the sewage treatment plant which would produce almost clear water.

According to Pirtle there used to be no people living on the site but farmers regularly came to tend the paddies. Pirtle said he did not know how many farmers had been out of work because of the project. More than 200 people own the rice fields there.

Tabanan regent I Komang Wijana said the rice fields transferred to the Bakrie Group were unproductive and considered less profitable.

"From one-hectare rice field, people invested Rp 350,000 ($158.5) to earn only about Rp 1 million. It is not really worth the effort," Wijana said.

Wijana said owners of the site were happy with the presence of the resort project because it increased their land value.

"Prior to the project, their land value was only Rp 130,000 per are (100 square meters), or Rp 1,300 per square meter. The project enables them to sell their land at Rp 4 million per are, or Rp 40,000 per square meter," said Wijana.

However, eight hectares of the site, which is owned by 49 families, has yet to be released for the project due to a disagreement on price, Setianto said.

Hartawan, the project's assistant landscape coordinator, said the land overlaps the adjacent land belonging to PT Lembah Tanah Lot Permai, another company which has also planned to build a championship golf course.

There are still two other investors eager to build resorts in nearby areas, a staffer of Tabanan regent, who requested anonymity, winked.