If you're lucky to come from a golf-rich country like the USA, Australia, Great Britain or Ireland, it can be hard to imagine places - especially in developed Europe - where golf really struggles to catch on.
Welcome to Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania. And welcome to MY challenge.
I am a Romanian born Australian citizen for about 35 years who has spent a good portion of his professional life traveling around the globe, playing as tour professional, master golf club maker and teaching professional, trying to give back what I have learned in all this years and to share my know-how and experiences.
Now, I’m on my OWN and away from my city, Brisbane, Australia. I settled down as the Head Pro at Lighthouse Golf Resort in Bulgaria, which is about an hour's drive from Constanta and 3-4 hours drive from Bucharest, Romania. It is the place where I want to get more Bulgarians and Romanians to embrace the game of golf.
But this is easier said than done.
This is still a new sport here in many ways, mostly are the Bulgarians and Romanians nouveau rich who are taking up the game. It's still not seen as a game for the general public.
Balchik, an attractive small resort, is located right in the heart of three championship golf courses, a place what used to be across the Bulgarian collective farmland in the communist era. Balchik, Kavarna and Dobrich population who grew up here were taught to be scornful of the trappings of bourgeois life.
Team sports were the thing during communist times - by this, we're talking about team sports that extolled the supremacy of socialism - and individual sports like golf and tennis were labeled too elitist, the playgrounds of the rich and decadent.
Therefore, what we're living nowdays is a time when the really first generation of Central and Eastern Europeans is discovering golf. In the 23 years since the fall of the comunism, golf courses have sprung up in places like Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Eastern Germany.
This does not attract our attention in Australia (and really, why should it?). Yet, it's interesting to watch a sport's birth among people, many of them probably still have parents and grandparents (with a communist mentality), questioning their enthusiasm for such a "Western" game like GOLF.
One of the LPGA Tour's up-and-comers is named Jana Peterkova. She hasn't done too much to date, but this Czech golfer knows what the game she's come to master represents to her family, who defected to Australia prior to the 1989 Velvet Revolution in then-Czechoslovakia.
"My dad forced me to play golf as a way of rebelling against the communist regime," Peterkova told me some time ago.
“He had this idea that, after the revolution, I would BE the best player in the country, which actually happened”.
There haven't been too many, male or female, like Peterkova - yet. Golf right now in the former Eastern Bloc is much more localized, with many regions still trying to get their golf infrastructure up to a level that can begin to breed professionals.
Here at the Lighthouse Golf Resort, the emphasis in part is about simply introducing people to golf. There are 3 golf courses for anyone who possess a handicap to play. But there's also a practice facility open to all beginners, completed with a driving range, putting green, full video analysis and one-on-one sessions with golf instructors.
We are trying to give beginners their first contact with the game, to bring them to the game.
Resort’s guests may get all the instructions and practice they want for free, between 9am-10am. But here's the most encouraging part: the general public can come and use the facility all day for 10 Euro . Not a bad deal, right ?
The club itself has many competitions which I organized with sponsors, mainly from Romania and Bulgaria. I started the Monthly Medal for members this year. I have great members (most of them Romanians, my countrymen) who always supported me in everything I did or I try to do. I am in the middle of trying to set up a charity, affiliated with the club, to focus on the youth golf. I am always very thankful to my partner, the SmartPoint agency, wich has the head office in Bucharest. This year, they helped me to develop a better website, for attracting more of the general public from Romania and Bulgaria.
All the good signs and all the reminders sports can grow from a grassroots level (something we might not think too much about in Australia.).
Still, just looking out across club's parking lot, loaded with Jaguars, Mercedes Benz, BMWs and Audis, reminds me that this still is a game for rich businessmen from Bucharest, Sofia and Constanta, and it will probably take a lot to close the gap between them and the everyday Bulgarians and Romanians - a gap that exists to varying degrees in the golf of other former communist countries from Europe.
It's just really hard to get local talent, I haven’t got the numbers, it's like the horse to water syndrome. They have to want to play the golf, they have to want to do it themselves.
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