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Francis Chan, CGCS, oversees Kinrara Golf Club in Malaysia. Photos by Kylie Yup<\/p>\n
Francis Chan, CGCS, oversees Kinrara Golf Club in Malaysia. Photos by Kylie Yup<\/p>\n
His goals don\u2019t sound any different than the golf course superintendent down the street at Anytown USA. The only difference is Francis Chan, CGCS, isn\u2019t exactly near almost any of you.\n<\/p>\n
Even while he is in a continent far, far away from America, his industry goals certainly sound like something a superintendent in the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia or anywhere else would concur with.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked with different clubs, owners and budget, yet all with a common goal: produce a consistent golf course, especially greens, throughout 365 days, regardless of whether it\u2019s rain or shine,\u201d says Chan, a 14-year GCSAA member who is director of golf course operations at Malaysia\u2019s Kinrara Golf Club, a public facility in the Asian country. He also is a golf course operations director for Greencare Services.\n<\/p>\n
Chan\u2019s original path to this industry wasn\u2019t exactly a straight shot. Or smooth. Far from it. That didn\u2019t stop him, though.\n<\/p>\n
The beginning of a journey<\/p>\n
Chan is a native of Kuching, Sarawak \u2014 the largest city on the island of Borneo, which features a tropical rainforest climate. It also is the site of golf courses, including a place where GCSAA\u2019s first Old Tom Morris Award recipient made quite an impact.\n<\/p>\n
Chan with Nur Syakirah, an intern from a local university, helping the maintenance team.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Damai Golf and Country Club, a resort course in Sarawak, opened 30 years ago in 1996. It is the first Arnold Palmer-designed course in Malaysia, under the name of the golf icon and 1983 Old Tom Morris Award winner. Overall, Malaysia has more than 200 golf courses in a country with roughly 35 million inhabitants.\n<\/p>\n
Life as a youth in Malaysia was \u201croutine and peaceful,\u201d according to Chan. As he matured, Chan didn\u2019t have a life in golf on his radar. Asked if he learned about working on a golf course in high school or college, Chan says, \u201cNo, my tertiary education is unrelated to golf course maintenance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
After graduation, Chan joined Kemira, a Finland-based global company focused on sustainable chemical solutions for water-intensive industries. Once he departed from Kemira, Chan\u2019s journey led to a well-known golf industry company. \u201cI worked with Nufarm as a sales and technical executive in the turf care division before I joined golf course maintenance,\u201d Chan says.\n<\/p>\n
His time with Nufarm aided him in becoming familiar with the golf side of things. \u201cBoth of my first employers provided me a good foundation in fertility and agronomical knowledges,\u201d Chan says.\n<\/p>\n
Once Chan finally entered the golf course side of work, his entry soon created conflicted feelings. \u201cI started at the right time but the wrong place,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n
Slow start but a happy ending<\/p>\n
Chan had no plan to become a golf course superintendent \u2014 not until one of his Nufarm clients sought his presence at its golf course. In 2010, Octville Golf & Country Club Resort in Johor, Malaysia, targeted him. Immediately. The course wanted him in right-now fashion, naming Chan a first-time superintendent to guide its resurgence. If he only knew. \u201cI think I started at the right time (to become a superintendent), but at the wrong place,\u201d Chan says. \u201cThe maintenance service provider decided to quit the operation, and the owner of the resort rang me for assistance. He offered me to manage the place.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Thinking he was prepared to oversee Octville, it didn\u2019t take long for Chan to realize the task was daunting. \u201cI believed that being equipped with all the technical knowledge, I could manage and turn around the course in no time. But truth can be cruel,\u201d Chan says, \u201cand I underestimated the damages that had been done by the previous operators of the course, and I overestimated the leniency from management toward me. Conditions were going south, everything seemed to be not working, members complained, and management was putting pressure on me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The club hired a consultant. Chan was given 30 days to turn things around. He was disillusioned. \u201cI was totally devastated,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n
If anything, Chan proved to be a fighter. He sought assistance from a former client and golf course superintendent from Singapore, Lim Hua Kiat, who lent practical and technical support. \u201cHis \u2018we practice action over words\u2019 with radical accountability helped me. He shared with me what reality is and his know-how,\u201d says Chan, \u201cand we managed to turn the course around in a month at Octville. The course was in dire straits and I challenged my critics. The rest is history.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
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Tariq Aziz (seated) is one of Chan\u2019s team members at Kinrara Golf Club, a public facility.<\/p>\n
A comeback, part two<\/p>\n
Upon his arrival at Kinrara GC, Chan faced another fixer-upper.\n<\/p>\n
In 2025, a Golf Digest story called Malaysia \u201ca golfing paradise,\u201d with excellent and challenging courses. It\u2019s a country in which golf major champion and 2018 Old Tom Morris Award recipient Ernie Els has multiple Els Designs properties. Kinrara GC isn\u2019t one of Els\u2019 designs, but it needed plenty of work upon Chan\u2019s arrival. \u201cThe golf course was neglected in late 2024 and shut down for three months before my management took over,\u201d Chan says. \u201cArmed with 20 skilled crew, we managed to resurrect the course before reopening for play in September 2025. Seeing the golfers back with smiles and showering gratitude toward our workmanship is kind of a special moment for me and my team.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Kinrara GC is 18 holes in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia. Greens are Tifdwarf bermudagrass with native fairways (Axonopus compressus). In the southeastern sections of the U.S., it\u2019s known as Southern carpetgrass. It\u2019s also known as tropical carpetgrass.\n<\/p>\n
Because of the tropical climate in Malaysia, golf is played throughout the year. Malaysia couldn\u2019t escape the COVID-19 pandemic, and there \u2014 as was the case elsewhere \u2014 golf served as a needed break from being stuck indoors. \u201cGolf was given a lifeline and got popular with youngsters, thanks to great publicity by many Asian golf leaders, including the PGA and LPGA,\u201d says Chan, who, along with his wife, Maysun, have daughters Kylie, Zene and Joey. Chan and his family have been to the U.S. numerous times \u2014 most recently in 2024, when they visited Los Angeles and the Grand Canyon.\n<\/p>\n
![\"Aerial](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/chan4_web.jpg\")
Irfan Ullah performing part of his daily tasks at Kinrara Golf Club.<\/p>\n
Still, golf does have a rival in Malaysia. \u201cI guess the country\u2019s No. 1 sport would be badminton,\u201d he says. \u201cI play badminton occasionally, but it\u2019s not my favorite sport. I do golf and very much enjoy a round with my daughters. And they definitely play better than me as I await my first hole-in-one.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
One thing is certain: Chan aced the CGCS thing. GCSAA\u2019s database noted that as of last month, Chan was one of 882 active CGCS members in GCSAA \u2014 and one of 18 active CGCS members outside of the U.S. Wherever he was on the job, no matter the challenge, big or small, Chan was determined to prevail. He says, \u201cI devoted myself to golf.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Howard Richman (hrichman@gcsaa.org) is GCM\u2019s associate editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Francis Chan, CGCS, oversees Kinrara Golf Club in Malaysia. Photos by Kylie Yup His goals don\u2019t sound any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-529689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}