Four weeks of Christmas holidays having finished, it was time for the Ballbashers to return to studying to become at least a partially competent golfer. Mike celebrated this event with an update to his school uniform in the shape of a pair of new gleaming white shoes as seen opposite. With Temple being quite muddy, it seemed a huge shame to baptise them but Mike seemed to prefer having dry feet at last rather than worrying about the post-match cleaning. We did see him endeavouring to clean some mud of them mid-round but that was very definitely in the realms of King Canute – the mud would not be denied.
It was actually a quite reasonable day on which to start golfing in 2025 – definitely warm enough with no sign of rain and no wind. Six Ballbashers turned out to tackle the first Frostbite League game. The balls were thrown and MikeS, RobA and I formed one team and Stuart, Alan and RobM the other. The tee peg was spun and our team won the right to start. The team game was based on the best 2 scores per hole on full handicaps – nice and simple.
There was no sign of rust in our first 3 drives but we did observe that the balls just did not run and we had to try to remember to use about 2 clubs more than we might naturally choose for the distance to be covered. This very occasionally resulted in shots going way past the intended target as on the downhill 8th where a temporary green was placed on the hill in front of the green, and Rob and I hit very relaxed tee-shots way down onto the green, in my case where a white flag would normally be placed.
We were partially helped by the half dozen or so temporary holes being the size of buckets but we did need to remember to whack the putt hard enough to get through the undergrowth and into the hole. This did not suit the more delicate putters amongst us such as RobA and, even Mike, who often employs a putter from 50 yards out was having trouble. He started with two 3-pointers and might have thought that 2025 was going to be pars all the way but he knows only too well that the golfing gods are a masochistic bunch and indeed he had to wait until the 8th and then the 18th to score a couple more 3-pointers, and in the meantime endured some very wayward radar settings on his tee-shots.
Rob did get round the undergrowth problem by chipping into the bucket from 50 yards away on the Par 3 5th hole. Apart from the 4 points we got as a team, what was especially pleasing was that the other team were just behind us on the 4th green and they heard our huge cheers of happiness. We actually got 42 points on the front 9 but tailed off to 34 on the back.
I was wearing thicker golf gloves than normal – they are supposed to be heated but I cannot say that I felt that which was disappointing. But because they were thicker I had to change my grip slightly and the result seemed to be that my driving became a lot straighter than normal. Next time I shall have to play in ski’ing mittens and see if that will give me draw – it might look eccentric in the summer but it would definitely be worthwhile.
We were joined in the clubhouse by Bill who was looking much chipper than normal perhaps because he had n’t battled with putting through the mud. Maybe it’s the New Year but, for once, the conversation did not revolve entirely around Ballbasher health but rather on the more pressing problem of how we will cope with Trump, and also on how much money we have not made via gambling on BitCoins and other such ephemera. RobM seemed to have some sort of understanding but the majority of us could not understand why a meme held as a non-fungible token in a blockchain would have any value at all – the basic problem being that we had no comprehension of what any of those words meant.
Alan suggested that, in line with the BitCoin’s soaring value, we should revalue the BashCoin upwards – some members present thought that a very bad idea.
The team scores were:
MikeS, Richard & RobA 42 + 34 = 76
Alan, RobM & Stuart 35 + 38 = 73
For the Frostbite League:
Richard (39), Stuart (37), RobM (32), Alan (30), MikeS (28) and RobA (22).
The total of our individual scores was 89 whereas theirs’ was 99 which made our overall win seem strange – it was obviously the superb but totally uncontrollable meshing in our team what done it.
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