THE ORIGINS OF WOODBALL IN SINGAPORE
Invented in Taiwan in 1990, woodball is a mainly outdoor sport where players use a wooden mallet to hit a ball through a series of little “gates” – which are, interestingly, made out of recycled beer bottles.
Even the mallet head is bottle-shaped, leading me to wonder if the man who dreamt up this game did it at the bar after a bout of drinking.
Modelled loosely on golf, it is meant to be much easier because the distances are shorter and it can be played on grass, sand or indoor surfaces. As the popularity of the sport spread, the game soon made its way to Singapore in the late 1990s via the People’s Association which was on the hunt for a sport that could engage citizens to be active as they grew older.
Like the pickleball movement today, this small but dedicated community soon mushroomed – there are now 20 woodball clubs island-wide, of which about a dozen are linked to community centres.
The trick, said Mr Chong Tien Siong, 68, chief executive officer of the Woodball Association of Singapore, was to make the fairways accessible to everyone who lived in the heartlands.
The Bishan course, where Mr Tan and his team practise, is a little green enclave wedged between the NTUC FairPrice supermarket and a hawker centre. Anyone walking to get groceries or breakfast will not miss it.
And the course, which opened 20 years ago, is lovingly cared for entirely by volunteers – with trees and other plants dotting the fairway. For monthly mini tournaments, everyone converges on the Clementi Woods Park course which meets international standards, said Mr Chong.
This is how the national team’s youngest member Gwenifer Mak found woodball too as the course was near her home in Clementi.
When she was 12, she followed her mother, who also played woodball, and began playing regularly too.
“The course is just opposite my house, so it was very convenient. The more I played, the better I became and when they held tournaments to pick the national team, I managed to score quite well,” said Gwenifer.
