Which institution is responsible for popularising golfing in Singapore? Not the country clubs, says Peter Chan, which were seen as elitist and accessible to the privileged, but to the Parkland Golf Driving Range at East Coast Parkway.

Parkland Gold Driving Range was one of the first places in Singapore where one did not need a membership to learn how to golf. Peter writes:

The driving range was the project of the HUDC, the Singapore Sports Council, Intraco and the Shengli Holdings. Come rain or shine, night or day, budding golfers need not despair because the range was opened from 7 am to 10pm, 7 days a week including public holidays.

If not for Parkland Golf Driving Range, the public would not have picked up golf that easily since many golfing clubs were “out of bounds” to the public. There were many restrictions like you first needed to join a club and that in itself was not easy because the cost of joining was exorbitant (e.g. S$80,000 for a Tanah Merah Golf & Country Club membership in 1980), be strongly recommended by someone in an exclusive club (e.g. Singapore Island Country Club) or the scion of somebody from that golf club. Regular SAF officers were lucky because they automatically could use the Sembawang Golf Club.

Even if you had a membership, you could not hit the course immediately, and had to show proof of proficiency for fear of damaging the green. So driving ranges like these also helped eased the entry barriers for people who wanted to learn the sport. Peter blogs about his experience learning golf for the first time at Parklands Driving Range. You can read about it here.