The world's most remote golf course: the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, wedged between India and China, struggles with a new world—and a new game

Golf Digest, Nov, 2003 by John Barton

The country has been criticized at times for strictures that to an outsider can carry the faint whiff of totalitarianism--the decree to be happy, the mandated dress code, the treatment of non-native Bhutanese (tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis were exiled from the country in the early 1990s). "We're a small country, and we're so vulnerable that we cannot afford to have any division," Dawa explains. "Indira Gandhi took over Sikkim in 1973. She just walked in and grabbed it. There was no opposition, because there was no unity, no identity. The indigenous people had become the minority. We must be very careful."

The lunch plates have long since been cleared away, and the all-important mahjongg game beckons. The wind whips through the hills and the golf flags snap to attention. A putt is missed on the home green amid groans. Evening comes and cloaks the peaceful valley once more in darkness.

THE TAKTSHANG MONastery is the most sacred place in Bhutan, clinging improbably to the top of a sheer cliff face more than half a mile above the Paro valley floor. Taktshang means "tiger's nest"--the story goes that Guru Rinpoche, the "second Buddha" who brought Buddhism to Bhutan in the eighth century, flew to the site on the back of a tiger and spent months meditating in a cave. One day in 1986, a 40-year-old American golf pro was lumbering up the grueling path to the top.

Halfway up, Carl Marinello met a friendly monk in maroon robes. When the monk found out what the stranger did for a living, he said: "Jack Nicklaus!" News of that year's Masters Tournament had somehow reached the remote monastery, and the monk offered Marinello a coin to give to the champion as a good-luck charm. When Marinello returned home to Florida, months later, he mailed it to Nicklaus' office. "I never did find out if he got it," he says. "But he didn't need it. Nicklaus has always been an enlightened being."

Marinello was in Bhutan because earlier that year, he had been sitting at home feeling restless. He picked up a news bulletin from the South Florida PGA and spotted a small item: "Spend a summer in Bhutan training a team for the Asian Games in Seoul." He was soon on a plane, leaving behind a wife who would become an ex-wife.

The Asian Games squad was a ragtag collection of the country's best players, mostly 80s and 90s shooters. Over the next several months, Marinello whipped them into shape. They didn't have the best swings, but their experience with Bhutan's national sport, archery, meant they had incredible visual gifts and a remarkable aptitude for concentration--they would simply stand and fire the ball at the flag, like an arrow. They showed equanimity, too, in the face of golf's many frustrations, something Marinello attributed to their Buddhist beliefs. "Their discipline and self-control was amazing," he says.

Before the final round, Bhutan lay in 11th place out of 15. But the team was determined to rally on the last day and beat its juggernaut neighbor, China, which was in 10th. "They'd never played in a tournament before," says Marinello, "but they said: 'We'll beat China for you--and for the king.' And they did. They all had their best rounds of the week. Some had the best rounds of their lives."