A century of Santa Barbara

In 2007, the Sta. Barbara Golf Course turns 100, a milestone of underestimated magnitude in golf history. Sta. Barbara, now owned and managed by the Iloilo Golf and Country Club, Inc. (IGCCI), is the only non-European golf club which is a member of the "Society of 1907 Golf Clubs", which includes 37 other golf clubs in the United Kingdom that have been in existence since 1907. The majority of the member clubs are in Scotland (where golf was born), Ireland, England and Wales, with a lone member from Continental Europe in Lake Como, Italy.

As part of the joint celebration of all their centenaries, the golf clubs will allow members from other member clubs to play in any other member course, with no green fees. So members of Sta. Barbara may play in any Society courses in Europe throughout 1907.

Saint Barbara was born in the 4th century and brought up as a heathen. Dioscorus, her tyrannical father, locked her up in a secluded tower which he had built expressly to isolate her, much like Rapunzel in the fairy tale. In forced solitude, she turned herself to  prayer and study of the Word of God, and conspired to secretly be baptized and receive instruction by a Christian priest.

Barbara defied her father’s wish for her to marry. On one occasion when her father was away, Barbara had three windows inserted into a bathhouse he was building, to honor the Holy Trinity. Needless to say, Dioscorus was enraged by her action and also her conversion. He himself denounced her before the civil tribunal. She was tortured mercilessly and ultimately beheaded, with her own heartless father serving as her executioner. But while her soul was being borne by angels to Paradise, a flash of lightning struck Dioscorus, and he was swiftly punished by God for his misdeeds to his own flesh and blood.

St. Barbara’s life is a lesson in allowing God to be in control of our lives, so that we may not fall prey to anger and injustice. She serves as an inspiration for quiet resistance to injustice, and steadfastness in faith in the Almighty. Appropriate enough for a historical site such as a golf course, where people purposely go to commune with nature and allow the beauty of God’s creation to wash away the stress and anger with living in the city.

The story of the fabled golf course actually began in the 1850’s, when British Vice-Consul Nicholas Loney, based in Iloilo, began trading actively in Visayan goods, particularly sugar. In the same manner as Jim Thompson developed the silk trade in Thailand, Loney developed the country’s sugar industry. With the economy growing more and more robust, eventually when the Americans came, they recognized the need to improve the industrial lay-out of Iloilo specifically. So the Philippine Commission ordered the construction of roads and a railway system to improve the transport of goods, much as the Americans did in their Old West. Thus, they needed British experts in locomotives and eventually, Scottish engineers.

But building railroads is long, tedious, difficult work. The homesick Scots saw similarities between the rolling fields of Sta. Barbara and their own native glens. They built a small, nine-hole course following the natural undulation of the terrain, and had nipa hut shelters built at the entrance of the course, where the 11th fairway now is. By the 1920’s, the huts were replaced by bigger wooden and concrete structures. In World War II, those structures were destroyed, and the course returned to its old nipa huts for the meantime. It took returning golfers about a year to rebuild. 

Peace brought renewed life to Sta. Barbara. In 1947, Wallace McGregor Davies Sr., manager of the local British trading company Strachan and McMurray, and architect and club member Zafro Ledesma constructed and expanded the Quonset Hut Clubhouse. Typical of structures at the time, it was a rounded metal building like what the Allied Forces used for field headquarters during the war. I remember this faded but dignified building sitting squat near the entrance of the course on my first visit to Sta. Barbara nine years ago. This metal structure stood until the new clubhouse was built in 1999.

In the 1980’s, after years of painstaking fundraising and planning, Sta. Barbara’s course was renovated, and additional land was purchased to make the course more competitive.

The 6,056-yard par 70 course is now officially a part of Philippine history. On July 12, 2005, Dr. Noel Binayas, chairman of the Heritage Committee of IGCCI, received a letter from Ambeth Ocampo, president of the National Historical Institute (NHI), officially recognizing the historical significance of Sta. Barbara Golf Course as the "Oldest Existing Golf Course" in the Philippines. IGCCI is planning to install a historical marker in the golf course as part of its centenary celebration.

Throughout the past century, Sta. Barbara has managed to stay away from the mainstream crowd’s attention. Everywhere, there are quaint reminders of what the golf course has withstood. Original sandboxes still dot the fairways. The stone stairways that ushered one to the ponds at the foot of the 10th tee stil stand, refurbished for its 268-strong membership. The Golf Museum has preserved rare golf memorabilia, from late 1800’s golf balls rescued from the ponds, and many other reminders. And the trees that were saplings in our great grandfather’s times are now giants, watching over Sta. Barbara like wizened old veterans with their vast trunks measuring two meters in diameter. And she faces a new challenge: the need to expand now that more and more golfers have discovered the peaceful, gorgeously green rolling hills that Scottish engineers fell in love with a hundred years ago.