About
Hi, I’m Jabunong — and this is my Golf Passport
I Made My First Golf Club Out of Sticks and Boundary Wire
Growing up in Harare, Zimbabwe, golf wasn’t something kids like me played. It was a rich man’s sport — manicured fairways, expensive equipment, a world that didn’t feel like mine. But I was fascinated by it. I’d watch tournaments on TV and be completely hooked by the silence before a shot, the precision, the drama of a tight final round.
So I improvised.
I grew up at Chikurubi Police Camp in Harare — my father was a policeman. There was sticks and boundary wire everywhere, and I used to bend and shape it into makeshift clubs. The ball? A deodorant roll-on. That was my golf course. The back of the camp. Whatever grass or dirt was in front of me.
There was a man at the camp named Mr Mandaza — a professional golfer — and we used to stop and watch him hit balls whenever we could. There was also Nick Price, Zimbabwe’s greatest golfer, who was all over the news in the early 90s when I was in high school, winning majors and making a name for himself on the world stage. For a young Zimbabwean kid, that meant something. It made the game feel possible, even if it still felt far away.
September 2004 — The Round That Started Everything
I came to the UK in 2002. In my third year here, my father-in-law George — Sekuru, as we call him — suggested we go out for a round at Stockwood Park Golf Course in Luton. It was a sunny September day. My brother-in-law Mutsa was visiting from South Africa. Sekuru had a set of clubs but played occasionally. We were just three men on a sunny afternoon, giving it a go.
I’d been watching Tiger Woods dominate the sport at the height of his powers. Here was a Black man rewriting the rules of a sport that had always looked a certain way, played by a certain type of person. As a 25-year-old Black African man new to the UK, that mattered more than I could put into words. It lit something in me.
I missed nearly every tee shot that day. Shanked it. Duffed it. Made a complete mess of myself. But I left the course completely addicted.
Not to the success — I’d had none of that. To the challenge.
The eBay Starter Pack and Three Months on the Range
I went home and did what any sensible person does when they’ve just discovered a new obsession — I went on eBay and bought a starter pack of clubs.
But I made myself a rule: I would not set foot on a full course until I could make clean contact with the ball. So for three months, I played nothing but the range and a par-3 course near home. Club to ball. Again and again. Until the contact became real.
That discipline set the tone for how I’ve approached the game ever since. Golf doesn’t reward impatience. It rewards showing up, working at it, and accepting that some days will be rough.
By 2005, I was a member at Stockwood Park Golf Club. By 2010, I’d moved to Redbourn Golf Club. I was playing two or three times a week. The game had become part of who I was.
Amazon Happened
In 2012, I got a job at Amazon.
I don’t say that with bitterness — Amazon has given me a career, a challenge I respect, and a level of professional growth I’m proud of. But in 2013, I cancelled my golf membership. And between 2013 and 2021, golf became something I did occasionally — a round here and there, a loose membership with the Zambezi Golf Association, a community of Zimbabwean golfers in the UK who kept me connected to the game without the commitment of a club.
I rejoined Redbourn during the Covid years. Lockdown gave time back to people, and I rediscovered what I’d been missing. But by the end of 2023, work took over again — a promotion, more responsibility, personal circumstances that made everything harder — and the membership went again.
47 Years Old, Two Sons, and a Question Worth Asking
I’m 47 now. I have two sons. I have a career I’ve worked hard for.
And recently I sat down and asked myself: outside of my family, when have I been happiest?
The answer was obvious. On a golf course.
Not because golf is easy — it never is. But because golf does something that very few things in life do. Every round is different. Every round throws something new at you. And the way you respond to those challenges — a bad tee shot, a tight lie, a putt that breaks the wrong way — is really just a reflection of how you handle everything else. The patience. The resilience. Coming back. That’s how I’ve lived my life, and golf is where I feel it most clearly.
Why Golf Passport UK Exists
I started this site for a few reasons, and I want to be honest about all of them.
The first is to share the journey. Not a highlight reel — the real thing. The rounds where it clicks, the rounds where it doesn’t, the courses that surprised me, the ones that humbled me.
The second is to help people like me. My audience isn’t tour professionals or single-figure club members playing 60 rounds a year. It’s the golfer with a 10-plus handicap and a busy life — someone who squeezes in 15 rounds a year if they’re lucky. Someone who wants to play more but has to be smart about where they spend their time and money. I want to be the honest guide that helps you decide whether a course is worth your precious Saturday morning.
The third, I’ll admit, is my boys. They’re starting to show an interest in the game. I want them to see that the game their dad loves has a history — his history — and that the boundary wire kid from Chikurubi eventually found his way onto the fairway.
This is that story. And it’s still being written.
Jabunong — Golfer, Father, Zimbabwean in the UK, and 47 years into figuring it out.