THIRTY top executives, mostly from communications and some information technology companies and their families, learned about the enhancing value of teamwork in the Phil Captain’s Golf Scramble at the cool and scenic surroundings of the Berjaya Hills Golf & Country Club on 15 November.

They included Dato’ Jamaludin Ibrahim president and group CEO of TM International, Eric Chong of DiGi Enterprise Business, Simon Ong of Maxis, Michael Kuehner head of Nokia Siemens Networks India sub-region, Shaifubahrim Saleh executive director of G-Tek Electronics, David Wong of Ship n Track and PIKOM chairman, Zakir Yusoff of telco services management software company Ascade Asia Pacific, Zulkifli Ghairi of Oracle Communications, Za’ba Hasrin MD of CCR Networks and Roderick Ruhl both of whom provide call centre services and others.

They were organised into teams of four which played the 18 hole golf course in friendly competition and the champion Team David and the runner up Team Christian received trophies, while the team which came last received a prize of a set of plastic golf clubs.

The informal group has met each year since 2000 to play to play games, mingle, chat, share technology and industry knowledge, and to bring their families together to all get to know each other socially, while marketing and sales talk is not allowed.

 “There are 10 million new mobile subscribers, including two million nee CDMA subscribers being added each month in India,” Kuehner told MW.

Its key purpose is to create a sense of camaraderie among professionals across different ICT companies and countries by gathering in a non-business oriented environment where they can let their hair down and laugh.

Another is to make individuals realise that they can’t work alone but need to work as a team to win. The team allows us to fail individually once in a while

“We all have weaknesses which we fear to expose before others but if we open them up, we can see our weaknesses more clearly and our fellow team members who help lift us up and the team also encourages greater risk taking,” said Phil Captain, a professional management coach.

“In one instance, to reach the putting green with a par 4 hole, I hit the ball to the elbow of the L-shaped fairway and a stronger team member decided to take a risk with the remaining three shots to hit a ball with all his strength over the water trap to land on the putting green in one shot, which is a risk no player would take if playing individually,” he added.

Membership of the informal group are by invited to join after they have been identified for compatibility with group’s aims and objectives by four anchor members including Phil Captain, who mostly decides on who to invite.

Dylan Wong won the first prize of a Motorola L6i phone and a gold medal in the children’s putting competition, while Farah and Mae Elliessa got silver and bronze respectively.

Fuziah Yeop Omar (ZIE) won the ladies putting competition, while Yazmin and Yoke Lam won silver and bronze.

Michael Kuehner won a phone for hitting the ball nearest to a line on the fairway at hole number 18, while first and second prizes were also given to the teams which lost the most balls – ie. 26 and 20 respectively.

So the message is clear: – you win a little and lose a little but pick yourself up and carry on. “Cry me a river but also build me a bridge so I can cross over and move on,” said Captain.

As one of the main sponsors, DiGi contributed phones for prizes and umbrellas as door gifts, while Gamat eMAS, Prichett Rummler-Brache and Frontline Resources Group were the other main sponsors of the event. Secondary sponsors were Maxis, MyKad Reader and Celcom.

Meanwhile, key executives have been moving around:- Eric Chong moved to DiGi from Motorola Mobile Phones, Eric Goh had just left Sony Ericsson, Alex Wong of Samsung has moved to Sony Ericsson, while Andrew Cheong had moved to Samsung from Nokia.

Non members welcome

The Berjaya Hills Golf & Country Club is open to non-members too and many walk-in golfers are from Kuala Lumpur and hold AGS, AGN and SG golf cards, according to the club’s golf manager Steven Cheah

"We also get many commercial groups who hold private competitions and we’ll organise whole tournaments for them according to how they want it and that includes putting competitions,” said Cheah.

“The annual Pahang Open golf championship, sanctioned by the Malaysian Golf Association. has been held here for the past seven consecutive years and last year, we held a World Amateur League competition.