One more revolution - Cubs's first pro golf tournament since the revolution

When you walk into the international media cen-ter in Havana to register for a press card, the first thing that greets you is a large black-and-white photograph of Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara. But this is no ordinary Che poster. There is no raised fist, no anti-American caption. What you see instead is Che smiling mischievously, while leaning on a 7-iron. I'm not makin' this up. I bought the poster right off the wall.

Che and Fidel Castro played a round together in 1959, shortly before Castro was to visit Washington. The Cuban leader was hoping to meet President Dwight D. Eisenhower and had been told that Ike liked to play golf. So Che, who apparently had done some caddieing in his youth and actually knew a 7-iron from a machete, took Castro out for a quick 18 to get his game up to par. Comandante en Jefe, who was dressed in Army fatigues and combat boots (the first alternative spikes) reportedly shot 150 in his tune-up. Never mind. He never got to see Ike anyway.

But what goes around does come around. Some 40 years later Fidel was scheduled to officially inaugurate Cuba's first new golf course since the revolution, and kick off its first pro golf tournament since then as well--the season-ending Tour Championship of the Challenge Tour, the PGA European Tour's equivalent of the Nike Tour. Alas, Castro sent other dignitaries to preside over the festivities. The $120,000 tournament was played at Cuba's new links course, the Varadero Golf Club, two hours' drive east of Havana, and in a nice touch the tournament began on Oct. 28--37 years to the day that the Cuban missile crisis ended. In a few years, the Varadero tournament is scheduled to become "The Cuban Open," an official stop of the European tour, which would pretty much bring Cuba back to where it started. Before the 1959 revolution, Cuba had nearly a dozen golf courses, including two Donald Ross-designed gems: the Havana Biltmore Golf Club and the Country Club of Havana, which for 11 years was a PGA Tour stop.

Castro had all except one nine-hole course plowed under after he took over. So why the resurrection of golf in Cuba today? Simple. For three decades Cuba lived off the aid of the Soviet Union, but when it collapsed after 1989, Castro found himself desperate for hard currency. He also discovered that the best way for him to earn dollars without having to actually open his political system was by letting in some tourists. Somebody then explained to him that the wealthiest tourists tended to play golf. OK, said Castro, then golf it is. So the Cuban revolution, which started out jokingly leaning on a 7-iron 40 years ago, is back leaning on a 7-iron today, only now it's no joke.

"We view golf as a very necessary activity to be developed by our country, with the aim of attracting higher-income tourists," explains Cuba's Vice Minister of Tourism, Eduardo Rodriguez de la Vega. "We have just built a new course in Varadero. We are considering starting two others soon. In our master plan, we have reserved land for a golf course in each of the eight designated tourist regions of the country.

"If and when the day comes that the U.S. lifts its restrictions on American tourists and businessmen visiting Cuba," says Rodriguez dreamily, "then, if only 10 percent of the golf players in the U.S. would come to Cuba, we would need 150 courses."

Isn't Cuba's government worried about sullying its revolutionary reputation with golf courses? Rodriguez says no. They intend to make golf an "open sport," with schools to introduce it to Cuban young people. The Cuban minister, though, did reveal some knowledge of the game, when he added, "A friend of mine told me that your golf handicap is equal to the number of days you work a month. If you are a 30-handicapper, it means you work 30 days. If you are an 8, it means you work only eight days. What is your handicap?"

Cuba, China, North Korea and Vietnam--the world's last Communist-led countries--are surely going to be among the most booming golf countries of the new millennium. Also virgin territory for golf development in Y2K are rogue states, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Burma, where fun currently has been outlawed by their leaders, but, hey, that can't last forever. Just look at Cuba. Cuba already has lots of tourist-golfers visiting, but it doesn't have enough courses yet. China has built many golf courses, but it hasn't really attracted the golfers yet. North Korea doesn't have any courses or any golfers, but it's got plenty of undeveloped terrain. Don't laugh. Anyone who has visited the famous Demilitarized Zone, separating North and South Korea, can see that the combination of hills, scrub and sand there bear a striking resemblance to the terrain at Royal County Down, Northern Ireland's great links. Ben Crenshaw would have a field day routing a course through the foothills of the DMZ. It is so much more interesting than Nebraska.

"Think of all the [natural] pot bunkers you would have," says Rick Elyea, a prominent turfgrass consultant, who salivates at the challenge of growing bent grass along the 38th parallel. "The weather in North Korea is more severe than in the south, so the season would be shorter, but I'm sure we could do it. I was just at a trade show in China and met some developers who want to build a course in Tibet."

Before the revolution

And if the North Koreans are looking for cover, they can just follow Castro's precedent. For years, the only course in Cuba was the nine-hole Club de Golf Havana, located in a forested area between downtown Havana and the airport. When I showed up to play one afternoon last September, I was assigned as my guide the club's most experienced caddie, 75-year-old Angel Miguel Rodriguez, whose arms and legs weren't much wider than the bubble shafts on my Taylor Mades.

"So, who have you caddied for, An-gel?" I ask, to get a feel for his pedigree.

"Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret, King Leopold of Belgium--they all been here--before the revolution," answers Angel, who has been caddieing since 1944. A few holes into my round with Angel, I crushed a drive and, in my en-thusiasm (and knowing I was the only one on the course), I did a brief Tarzan yell.

"He was here too," says Angel, not missing a beat. "Yeah, Johnny Weissmuller, he was here, too--before the revolution."

The Club de Golf Havana is a study in contrasts. The holes wind through a parkland setting that is stunningly beautiful. The rolling fairways are lined with coconut trees, royal palms and tall pines, and a small creek bisects the course. Unfortunately, the greens and fairways are not in good shape. Drainage is poor and the grass on the spongy fairways is a variety I had never encountered before. Angel described it as "chicken's leg"--possibly a distant cousin of Bermuda, more likely a close relative of crabgrass.

The putting greens also had a feature I had never encountered in golf on five continents: anthills. After I would hit my ball onto a green, Angel would walk down my putting line and smash all the anthills between me and the hole. Unfortunately, if my ball was just a bit off line, it would hit an anthill and careen off in another direction, like a pinball. I got no sympathy from my caddie, who would just shake his head as my ball went a foot wide of the hole. Like it was my fault! (It reminded me of a caddie I once had in Jakarta, Indonesia, who told me a certain putt should be struck "one ball outside the hole." When my putt ended up a foot outside the hole, the caddie said drolly, "I said a golf ball, not a soccer ball!")

Like those at Pine Valley, none of the bunkers at the Club de Golf Havana have rakes in them. Unlike Pine Valley, it's because the Club de Golf Havana can't afford rakes, or flags, so a long, shaved tree limb with a white rag at the top serves as the flagstick for each hole.

The Club de Golf Havana is techni-cally a private club, but anyone can play. The initiation fee is $70, monthly dues are $45 and green fees are $4 for members and $30 for nonmembers. Caddie fees are $6. Using different tees, but the same basic nine holes, the club has put together a par-70, 18-hole layout that measures 5,892 yards. The club holds an annual tournament, the Cubalse Cup, named after the Cuban holding company that owns the property, and it even offers a free Peugeot for anyone who makes a hole-in-one. Most of the players are dip-lomats or foreign businessmen. Regular Cubans either can't afford to play or simply aren't interested. Marlene Negrin, the caddiemaster, bemoans her countrymen's lack of interest in golf.

"People here like baseball," she ex-plains. "People have to learn to recognize that golf is something important. It is a pity that not everyone here thinks about golf."

All I could think of while listening to her was that old saying when your ball hangs on the lip--"Just one more revolution, Marlene." Just one more revolution in Cuba and golf will be back big time. The Cubalse Corporacion is now negotiating with a foreign investor to build a hotel on the grounds of the Club de Golf Havana, rebuild the fairways and greens and expand it to 18 separate holes. If they do that, and do it right, the natural setting for this course has the potential to make it a world-class destination.

There is one thing they won't have to change, though. The wood-paneled "Hoya 19" at the Club de Golf Havana. That they've got right already. I am the Craig Claiborne of 19th holes. I have quenched my thirst on chilled coconut juice, served with straw from a refriger-ated coconut at the Saujana Golf and Country Club in Malaysia; I have sated my hunger on the Singapore noodles at the Hong Kong Golf Club; I have washed down my woes with a Squash and Bitters at Royal Melbourne; and I have concluded that the cold sliced watermelon at the Caesarea Golf and Country Club in Israel is rivaled only by the cold sliced watermelon at the Beirut Golf and Country Club. I've relaxed with tea from a samovar at the Moscow City Club, warmed my spirits with Turkish coffee in a chipped cup at the Teheran Golf Club, sampled the diet Guarana juice at a course in Rio de Janeiro, and been more than happy to sip just plain (and safe) bottled water after 18 at the steamy Delhi Golf Club. But who can beat the Hoya 19 at the Club de Golf Havana? Where else do they ceremoniously unlock the humidor attached to the wall, offer you your choice of fresh-rolled cigars and let you relive every shot while smoking a Havana in Havana?

Larry Laoretti, eat your heart out.

'Not only for millionaires anymore'

The front line of the Cuban golf revolution, though, is the new Varadero course. Opened in 1998 on a narrow, breezy coral peninsula that was once part of the Pierre Du Pont family estate, Varadero is an unusual combination of holes. It has a touch of Mauna Lani, with three spectacular links holes that run along a white-sand beach, framed by coral rocks, coconut palms and the azure Caribbean. It has a pinch of Doral, with a string of inland holes, built around lakes and island fairways and greens. And it has a dollop of the El Paso Country Club, with a stretch of holes lined by gnarled cactus trees. At par 72, Varadero plays to 6,896 yards from the tips, and when the wind blows, as it almost always does, it's all the golf course you can handle.

I played the course, which was in good condition, in the company of two Cuban phys-ed teachers, who were part of a group of 15 Cuban natural athletes selected to be trained as Cuba's first class of golf instructors. None of them knew which end of the club to hold five years ago, and all of them can now play well. One of my partners, 39-year-old Idolio Mendez, shot 74--counting them all.

"I was working as a diving instructor for 11 years," explains Mendez. "I also used to do marathon running and water polo. After they built this course, there was a competition to select people with some physical skills to be trained as golfers. They took a little group, 20 or 25, and about 15 of us finished. They taught us all the basics of the game. I tell friends that golf is not only for millionaires anymore and that in a lot of countries they are trying to open it for regular people. Now I like it too much, so I got rid of all the other sports and I only play golf."

How did his family react?

"With the wife it's a big problem. 'Too much time,' she says, 'too many hours dedicated to the sport,' " sighs Mendez. "She said, 'You are going to leave me because of the golf.' "

Some things about golf never change, no matter what the language or terrain. Indeed, it is striking how much these new Cuban golfers have absorbed, isolated here on this island under American embargo. As we were walking down the fairway at Varadero, one of my other Cuban partners, Yusecct Monzo'n Paz, 27, turned to me out of the blue and blurted out: "Bob Rotella says rhythm is the most important thing and that you should watch David Duval's swing."

"Oh, really," I said, and how in the world did he know about Dr. Bob Rotella? He answered: "I heard about his book,

Golf is Not a Game of Perfection."

OK, so a little got lost in translation, but he got the main points: Rhythm. David Duval. Bob Rotella.

There is plenty of Cuban land for more Varaderos. Due to both poverty and sensitive planning, the Cubans have not paved over or spoiled their environment. On the drive from Havana to Varadero you pass endless stretches of rolling tropical forests, and empty beachfront. With good ecological management, Cuba could preserve its tropical wilderness and still tuck in a Bali Handara here and a Prince Course there.

"Some of the area that is available here for courses just takes your breath away," says Jimmy Burns, the British PGA member, who is the director of golf at Varadero. "You don't need to be an architect to see it, you just need to be a player."

But don't expect the Disneys and Marriotts to be able to move right in when Castro dies and start building courses. First of all, the bearded one is only 73, and he apparently gave up smoking cigars 10 years ago. He could be shooting his age for a while. Moreover, the most likely thing to happen in Cuba after Castro goes is some form of protracted power struggle, with the Cuban exiles in Florida backing one faction and the remaining pro-Castroite Cubans, led by Fidel's brother Raul (who heads Cuba's military) in the other faction. Things could get very messy.

There will also be a tremendous amount of litigation to sort through, as thousands of exiled Cubans seek to recover lost land and property that was expropriated by the Castro regime after 1959. It would be nice if Cuba after Castro could come in for a soft landing, and we should begin working on that right now by ending the U.S. boycott on Cuba, training Cubans and investing in the country. But American policy toward Cuba is effectively designed to prevent that. By insisting that the U.S. will not lift the trade embargo on Cuba--which has been in place since 1962--until Castro is gone, the U.S. is making sure that Castro's Cuba remains poor and backward.

Cuba's economic decline is also due to Castro's insistence, for reasons of political control, on holding to his idiotic Communist ideology and opening Cuba to the free market only a tiny crack. Communism, as they say, may be great for making missiles and tractors, but it's terrible at breakfast, lunch and dinner--let alone par 3s, par 4s and par 5s.

So, despite Cuba's plans, it may not get much better golf than Varadero for a while. By the way, green fees at Varadero are $60, plus $10 for a caddie or $25 for a cart. The clubhouse is the beautifully restored, Spanish-style, 1930-intage Du Pont estate mansion, and at the 19th hole the waiter recommends for lunch, well, you guessed it, "The Du Pont Sandwich"--a ham, cheese and tomato combo. Somehow, I never thought I'd live long enough to see Castro's Cuba offering the Du Pont Sandwich. Imagine what they'll be offering here . . . with just one more revolution.

Thomas L. Friedman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign-affairs columnist for The New York Times and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. This is his first article for Golf Digest.

RELATED ARTICLE: If you go: Travel restrictions

Travel restrictions for U.S. citizens hoping to visit Cuba were first imposed in 1963. Unless you are a journalist, academic researcher, government official or traveling with a "hardship" exception (such as visiting a family member who is ill), you are not allowed to spend money on the island. Those who violate the monetary restriction--in essence, a travel ban--are subject to up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 criminal fine and a $55,000 civil penalty.

U.S. citizens have illegally skirted the travel restrictions by traveling through a "third" country such as Mexico, Canada or the Bahamas. (The travelers book tickets to the third country and then get separate tickets to Cuba.)

Cuba does not stamp U.S. passports. Instead, a separate visa is issued, which the travelers throw away before entering the U.S. On the return to the U.S. through Customs, the travelers say they have been in the third country but do not mention Cuba.

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