High Golf

La Paz Golf Club

Last week, I played what is considered to be our planet’s highest golf course. It’s called the La Paz Golf Club, and it’s laid out in a rocky, arid zone just south of La Paz, Bolivia.

The La Paz Golf Club claims to be 3,342 meters at its highest point and 3,277 at its lowest — or 10,964 and 10,0751 feet, respectively. The world’s next highest course is apparently somewhere in China.

El Driving Range

Founded in 1912, the privately run La Paz Golf Club mingles its nicely manicured fairways with the badlands of the Valle de la Luna, or Valley of the Moon, a little more than six miles south of the Bolivian capital’s center. And while it unveils mostly as an unusual variation on a typical desert course, there are times where the visual stakes are raised to a cosmic level.

This is never truer than at the craggy, wonderfully weird landscape of the par 3 Hoyo Lunar, or “Moon Hole.” Teeing off at the Moon Hole is like trying to traverse an oversized mouth of decaying Bolivian teeth.

El Hoyo Lunar, "The Moon Hole"

Of course, the “traversing” is not literal. It’s done with a little white ball, and almost exclusively by rich Bolivians or bemused tourists. Which makes this course, in some ways, even that more bizarre. Even without my clubs and golf shoe rentals, a round costs around 70 bucks. That may be normal in the U.S., but it’s a fortune by any normal Bolivian’s standards.

Despite the afternoon’s undeniable charm and novelty, at times it felt a little odd for me to take in a goofy pastime when only ten miles away, at an altitude a few thousand feet higher and with considerably less oxygen and warmth, lies La Paz’ poor sister city El Alto, one of the most destitute urban areas in all of Latin America. Not to get too heavy about the class comparison, but a sporting “adventure” is just a silly luxury measured on a scorecard at the La Paz Golf Club, while the daily adventures of the average struggling alteno is an entirely different thing altogether.

That said, it was still quite cool and strange to, like a privileged “sportsman,” be accompanied by a caddy for the first time in my life. Renting a caddy is required at the cart-less La Paz Golf Club. It turned out to be a great rule for me. It was the rainy season and the course was empty, so I was playing alone. I was lucky, then, to get stuck with Gonzalo, a hell of a caddy and a funny and interesting character.

Gonzalo comes from a family of nine. His dad is an avid golfer, and therefore so is he and his four brothers, making for quite an uncommon Bolivian brood. And while this full-time caddy isn’t the least bit rich, he actually has a driving range installed in his backyard, not far from work.

Gonzalo has worked at the La Paz Golf Club for eight years and says that he, with his free rounds on Mondays, has played the course over 200 times. He claims a nine handicap and three holes-in-one at the club.

It certainly helped to have a caddy, if not for the fact that the altitude tires you out faster at this regulation-length course, then just for the help he provides in choosing your club for each shot. The La Paz Golf Club is an exercise in double calculation: choosing your club like you normally would, then remembering to adjust for the home-run effect of the outrageous altitude. I overruled Gonzalo on the second hole when he urged me to use a 6-iron instead of a 5-iron, and, of course, I was wrong. I listened to him from there on out. He was surely used to that exchange, though, because he’d obviously caddied for extranjeros many times before. There can be no other explanation for him saying, in English, “Come on, ball … come on, ball!” whenever a shot of mine sailed near the green.

It was a bonus to walk the 6,879 yards of the famous La Paz Golf Club with someone who knew its every curve and break. It was a fair tradeoff, though. While Gonzalo told me which clubs to use, I helped him hypothetically compose a letter to Tiger Woods, in which he asked the golf great if his beautiful Norwegian ex-model wife had a sister. I also threw in a few free lessons in filthy English curse words, which he hilariously practiced over and over for all 18 holes.

Gonzalo, one of the world's highest caddies

La Paz Golf Club (in Spanish):

http://www.lapazgolfclub.com/web/index1.htm

Video of Bolivian Cholitas at La Paz Golf Club:

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