golfing with real bunkers OR go for the Green (Zone)

Speaking of golfing with little available water, there's this from the AP as reproduced at NBCNews.com (hat tip: C-J)...

This is golf, Green Zone style.

One recent afternoon - squeezed in between sandstorms and incoming mortar rounds - a colleague and I hit the links. We dubbed it the Baghdad Open.

But there's nothing really open about it. The nine-hole Crossed Swords Golf Course is closed in by 15-foot concrete blast walls and watched over by humorless Gurkha guards from Nepal.

Black Hawk helicopters buzzed overhead. Bursts of gunfire interrupted backswings. The threat of incoming rockets and mortars was ever present.

The course - a total of 479 rugged, dusty and nerve-fraying yards - was created a year ago by a British military officer who was part of a NATO training mission. Its name comes from one of Saddam Hussein's eccentric architectural legacies that's now a Green Zone landmark: two giant hands holding curved sabers that served as an archway for the late dictator's parade grounds.

The course "is the sole entertainment that we have here in Iraq,'' said Air Force Maj. Al Geralt of San Diego as he finished a round. He reported his score was somewhere between "abysmal and miserable.''

"But it's loads of fun,'' he said. "The NATO boys that came up with it - it is one of the best things they could have done for morale out here.''

So long as you don't expect anything resembling the country club back home.

The greens would more aptly be called "browns'' as they are made of dirt. The cups are fashioned out of baked bean cans sunk into the ground with large, creepy beetles crawling in the bottom.

There was, of course, a sand bunker. But oddly, for a desert country, just one.

Arguably the most hallowed spot of American golf - Augusta National, home of the Masters - bills its Amen Corner, holes No. 11, 12 and 13, as among the toughest tests in the golfing world. But I would challenge Tiger Woods to a round at the Green Zone course any day - just to see how his steely concentration would hold up when the mortar alarm blares: "Incoming! Incoming! Take cover!'' and shells land nearby.

Players are allowed only two clubs - a short iron or a pitching wedge, along with a putter....

The fee is a small donation (most people give $2 for a round) and about $800 has been raised so far. Once they hit the $1,000 mark, all future proceeds will go to the National Fallen Heroes Foundation, a charity that helps the families of American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Our tee time was 5 p.m. The day had cooled to about 109 degrees....

It has competition, though. Several years after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the Kabul Golf Club was cleared of landmines and reopened. Near the DMZ separating the Korean peninsula, the single, 192-yard hole at U.S. Camp Bonifas playfully billed itself as "the world's most dangerous golf course.''

In the Green Zone, there is so little grass on the course golfers must carry their own: swatches of artificial turf for all shots except putts....

There are a few unusual club rules:

A ball can always be repositioned one club length, as long as it isn't nearer the hole. When putting, a player is allowed to remove large rocks from the path to the hole, but cannot use the putter to groove a trail in the hard soil to the cup.

Any ball hit over one of the concrete blast walls is considered lost - the player must replay the last shot and take a penalty stroke.

At least the layout is simple. The shortest hole is a 15-yarder, with the tee box being a sand bunker. The longest hole is 90 yards, a straight shot to the green.

During our swings on the second hole, prolonged bursts of gunfire could be heard - perhaps from a practice range private security guards use, maybe from fighting. Either way, there is nothing like the sound of a .50 caliber machine gun to disrupt a swing....

There was no money on the line in this year's Open - gambling is forbidden in Iraq under military rules. We don't fall under those guidelines, but we respected them out of sheer cheapness. Bragging rights back in the office would be payment enough....

Another golfer on the course, Clifford McDaid, a security consultant from Northern Ireland, smacked his tee shot 30 yards beyond the pin on the third hole. The ball hit one of the concrete blast walls and bounced back to within only a few feet of the cup.

"It's Baghdad rules, mate,'' he said to his golfing partner. "This is some crazy golf.''