Nasser Pangandaman
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New Year resolution No.1 - next time you see a ball bounding past you in the fairway or it arrives with a thud on the green alongside, don't be tempted to berate the group behind for their ungentlemanly conduct without checking they're not the Phillippines minister Nasser Pangandaman and his son Nasser Jr, a local mayor.
Chances are you might get beaten up for quoting golf's Rules of Etiquette to the pair and their bodyguards.
This is indeed what happened at Christmas to 56-year-old Delfin de la Paz and his son Bino, a junior golfer said to be one of the country’s best in his age group, when they insisted to the Pangandamans that golf etiquette had been breached as the entourage drove through them without any formal request.
Father and son were left battered and bruised as the pistol-wielding bodyguards set on them, watched by Delfin’s terrified 18-year-old daughter, Bambee, home from the University of Cincinnati golf scholarship.
Allegedly, when the Pangandamans, with their golf buggies and henchmen, overtook the De la Pazes on the third hole without so much as a by-your-leave, they complained — first to the Pangandamans themselves and later to the officials of club.
Meanwhile, the country awaits an appropriate penalty for the Pangandamans' misdemeanour, and hopes it might be a tad more than merely banning them from local golf courses. But with Phillippines government officials' and army generals' record of gangster-like activity and ignoring human rights, we somehow doubt it.
Tell us on the forum about the rudest behaviour you have experienced on a golf course.
