A Scot at home on the Angkor Resort golf course

A well travelled Scotsman with a passion for golf has found a second home on the Angkor Resort’s lush green. Adam Robertson knows how lucky he is. Every day on his short drive to work he glances back at the red dust rising in plumes behind his car and looks forward to the vista of greensward and sculpted bunkers that are his pride, joy and daily challenge.

Robertson is the smiling, 34-year-old Scottish operations manager at the recently completed and decidedly exclusive Angkor Golf Resort not far from the Angkor Wat temples complex off National Road 6 in Cambodia. He has a lot to be happy about. The Nick Faldo-designed course is the multimillion-dollar investment of Indonesian casino tycoon Holic Tandijono, 33, the oldest of three brothers whose competitive edge has been the driving force behind their various highly successful business ventures.  

This Professional Golfers’ Association-rated course has to be Holic’s crowning achievement. For even the lowest-handicap club golfer its statistics are mouthwatering: 7,279 yards, par 72, four par five, 400yd-plus (one is more than 500yds) holes and four par three, 114yd to 134yd holes plus two picture-postcard, signature holes. With generous fairways, inviting yet complex greens, water and sand hazards that will catch out all but the most accurate swinger, by western standards the links-style course is a bargain.

Golf is a new and to many Cambodians a mysterious game, Robertson says, played mostly by rich barangs (foreigners) who seem to love hitting and chasing small white balls around the countryside. The players’ enjoyment is a source of quizzical amazement by the Khmer ground staff who have left their rice paddies to tend an alternative agricultural venture. They are also learning a new and arcane language. 

Why do these madmen in chequered trousers get so excited when their golf balls drop into a “cup”, as it’s called? Equally, why do their tempers flair not because of exposure to the midday sun but after they “slice” or “hook” their golf balls, both of which are terms not in a Khmer-English dictionary?

Teaching the 85-strong team of female caddies and starters, ground staff, maintenance and hospitality people has been a long, hard slog but worth it, says Robertson. That’s because he is so obviously enjoying his days in the sun and admits he’s something of a golf “tart”, having been part of the management teams responsible for top courses around the Asia-Pacific region since 1973. He also “strayed into” the pressure cooker environment of the International Management Group founded by the late Mark McCormack “for an uncomfortable few months”.

Unlike the IMG team he left behind, he has an easygoing manner, quick wit and a love of golf management which isn’t just about the big money that can turn heads. He also has a blinding and consistent swing that flies a ball out of sight on the 350-yard grass and bunkered practice range at Angkor.

“Golf has always been my first love,” he says, looking out over the 18th fairway at the Angkor Resort. “Living at the home of golf I played all five courses. It was as cheap as chips and the whole family, including my two brothers, played. I started when I was five years old and every summer attended the children’s holiday golf lessons organised by the professional at St Andrews, which was an attempt to bring on young Scottish talent.”

From the comfortable moneyed background of an insurance company executive father and a mother who had fashionable designs on St Andrews’ glitterati, Robertson says he was born with a backpack. After school, Edinburgh University and sweeping the streets to pay his way through a postgraduate course in golf management, he headed east with a one-way ticket to Hong Kong.

Since then he has worked his way up from tournament junior jobsworth to golf instructor at the Hong Kong football club (“great fun, ’cos it was at the Happy Valley racecourse”), marketing an executives’ golfing loyalty club to golf manager at the legendary and sprawling Mission Hills sporting complex in China.

After two years there he took his expertise off to Thailand where he raised the marketing profile of courses in Bangkok and Chonburi. His brief, two-month foray with IMG followed and he admits that perhaps he was too young and was not comfortable with the “aggressive philosophy” of the American sports management leviathan.

It therefore seems odd that Robertson has been happy to accept IMG as a playing partner at the Angkor Resort. “Its involvement has given the course enormous credibility and it means we have access to top players such as Tiger Woods and Retief Goosen.”

From golfing stars to southeast Asia’s movers and shakers; membership to the Angkor Resort is a strictly limited affair. Its 25 individual members paid $25,000 (about £12,750) for 12-year membership and captains of commerce and industry handed over $50,000 for 12-year corporate membership. Exclusive is a coveted byword among its members, not least because the lucky 25 who signed up were presented with a set of King Cobra clubs, which more then sweetened the already bargain price of just over $2,000 a year.

With the likes of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s recently re-elected prime minister who was the first to play nine holes when the course opened in December 2007, Thaksin Shinowatra, the former Thai leader, and a raft of heads of state, political and military top brass in the region, the course is a comfortably secure environment.

Non-members can also enjoy the sparse use the course is put through. The divots that tear up top Scottish courses during the summer are a rarity and any damage is quickly repaired by the army of ground staff after a golfer digs deep for a high and handsome approach shot.

The only things missing from the resort is the accommodation that is implied in its name, but Robertson says that over the next few years a complex of chalet-style villas, an upscale designer shopping complex, restaurant, bar and clubhouse will be built. So there’s all to play for in Robertson’s kingdom.

Over a cool drink in the current clubhouse bar and restaurant he explained that before the course was sculpted into its present excellence, a de-mining team probed the site and found at least five pieces of unexploded landmines. The area was the scene of fierce fighting and destructive looting before and after the Khmer Rouge occupation of about 30 years ago.

On the lighter side, he gets a laugh out of his early days training the course’s attractive team of caddies.

“They have come up with the most extraordinary ideas,” he says. “One of our golfers came back to the clubhouse smirking over the discovery of a snake next to his ball on the fairway. Jokingly, he asked his caddy if he would lose a stroke for removing it and she replied, with a totally straight face; ‘that’s all right, you can kill it and take it home to put in the pot for supper’. His most enduring memory, though, is of the caddy who, when first presented with a set of golf clubs, described them as “digging tools”. Although caddying for some “rabbit” golfers could prove her right.

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