Maybe Tieza was told, very seriously, by very online people: “Golf courses are an awful waste of space.” Terrible. A scandal even. And that Club Intramuros Golf Course — public, affordable, since 1906, wow-wow — should take Sundays off and become a park.
Nice. Very wholesome. Picnics, jogging. Dog-forward — except the Department of Tourism is telling the world we’re serious about golf tourism.
“Come.” “Play here.” Bring friends. Money.
Then, very calmly, politely, we add: “Except Sundays.”
Everybody loves Sundays. Very laidback. A hike. Maybe a swim-swim. But no serious destination markets itself with caveats.
Travelers plan around certainty. Golfers fly for tee times. Grass. When your tourism policy sounds like, “Sir, we’ll see how it feels this weekend,” people book Thailand. Or somewhere that does not negotiate with its own pitch.
Tourists are polite. Won’t complain for sure. They just don’t come back.
If Luneta were a little farther away we’d understand. Apparently now the itch is simple: something exists and functions and doesn’t need their opinion.
Rizal Park is already doing park things. We say go build more, expand Rizal Park, build, build, build, plant trees everywhere, do it yesterday.
But if you still believe parks stay parks here, Arroceros would like a word.
First it’s picnics. Then jogging lanes. Then someone asks why there are golfers interrupting the jogging lanes. Eventually you wake up one morning and go, “Why do we even have golf here?”
Nobody ruins an asset with a bulldozer anymore. Too obvious — didn’t work with Manila Bay. Now you do it with Sundays. Soft Sundays. Friendly weekend.
Now-now: people — very woke. Flower-power movement. “Reclaim public spaces!” You wonder if it’s poverty of space or poverty of standards.
They hear golf and immediately picture yachts. Please. This is not a country club. If P1,000 is “for the rich,” the argument is broke.
Some even say “not historic.” Funny because it’s been there longer than most of the opinions about it. Doesn’t come with a moat so they get confused.
They hear “American-era” and they stop thinking. And they’re asking it under electric lights. Historic lights. Very American.
Mixing things up is how Metro Manila happened. One day it’s a road, next day it’s a carwash, then —boom! — condo with a lechon manok out front.
We already tried mix-mix. That’s why the sidewalk sells fish, the bike lane parks SUVs, the drainage hosts a family of rats that have tenure. Because someone once said, “Let’s just share the space.” Legendary thinking.
Your chop suey works in a wok, not in a capital city. If mixing worked, Metro Manila wouldn’t have been a case study taught internationally as a warning.
When everything becomes everything, nothing gets to be itself — that, more than the golf, is what really ruins a city.
We’ve seen this beach before. The danger isn’t what they plan to build now as what becomes easier to justify later.