Yesterday at Huntswood we enjoyed the extreme pluses and minuses of Ballbasher golf in the best golfing weather that 2025 has so far brought us. Coming to think about it, there were probably only 2 real pluses – the weather and the return after a 6-month layoff of Player A. But on the minus side, where Player A is to be seen you can be sure that Player B is somewhere close at hand lurking in the bushes.
Five turned out to play and the balls fell so that MikeS was partnered with JohnS and Nick, Roger and I made up the other team. It was the first Eclectic game of the new season and we were all looking to make a fast start while some of the other Eclectic maestros were away on holidays in faraway places. It is fair to say that rather than making a fast start, all of us were stuck in reverse. In my case, I was travelling uncontrollably backwards as though in a nightmare, colliding with every hazard there is to found at Huntswood.
MikeS and Johns sent some good shots down the first fairway and they set off. Player A then bestrode the tee and also sent a tee-shot straight down the left-hand side which is exactly where you want to be on the 1st hole. I faded my drive into the trees on the right and then topped my next shot straight down the middle into the pond across the front of the 1st. It didn’t go far in so I retrieved it and then thinned it across the green and ended up with a blob – this proved to be an augury for what was to follow.
Player A parred the hole for 3 points and Nick wondered if he should finish his round at this point and retire to the clubhouse. He may have been right but the weather was nice so he carried on to the great delight of Player B who racked up 3 blobs in a row. All 3 of us found ourselves in the bunker across the front of the 2nd hole and Nick was able to use his putter to get himself out and onto the green but a series of further putts which each halved the distance to the hole resulted in a blob – not that Roger and I did much better.
During his layoff Nick had bought a new wonder club which allegedly guarantees perfect shots out of any bunker. Whoever designed this golfing marvel had clearly not tested it out with Player B who found it as good as a spade when it came to shovelling large quantities of sand out of a bunker while still leaving the ball where it first lay. The club was probably designed by AI which being based on some kind of mathematical logic, bears no resemblance at all to a Ballbashers version of intelligence.
Roger was playing quite consistently when compared to his 2 team-mates and generally managed to avoid going into every ditch, hedge and bunker that his team-mates found. My game was in shreds and even when I did manage to string a tee-shot and a 3-wood together on the 12th I found the bunker on the left of the green and then thinned my bunker shot miles away over the fence and into the woods on the far side of the green.
We reached the halfway point with a team score of 3 three-pointers – two scored by Player A and one by Roger. And so it continued. When I was at my most suicidal, the sadistic golfing gods relented and allowed me to score 3 points on both the 16th and 17th but they then decided that they had been too generous and my drive on the Par 5 18th went out of bounds down the right, as did Roger’s which left just Nick to attempt to improve the team score and he did indeed get on the green in 3 shots. His tendency to leave every putt halfway to the hole had improved to 2/3rds but the resultant 3 putts knocked out the chance of another par.
The denouement in the clubhouse revealed that everyone had racked up a lot of blobs. Mike and John had 13 between them which equates to blobbing 36% of the 36 holes they played between them, Nick, Roger and I had 19 blobs which equated to 35.18% of the 54 holes we played and that 0.82% difference gave us a very narrow overall victory and 0.33 BashCoin each.
Team scores on the front 9:
MikesS and JohnS: 9 divided by 2 = 4.5 – won the front 9
Nick, Roger and Richard: 9 divided by 3 = 3.0
Team scores on the back 9:
MikeS and JohnS: 6 divided by 2 = 3
Nick, Roger and Richard: 15 divided by 3 = 5 – won the back 9
Total:
MikeS and JohnS: 7.5
Nick, Roger and Richard 8.0
Individual scores: Roger (27), MikeS (25), Richard (22), JohnS (21), Nick (17).
Blob count: Roger (5), MikeS and Richard (6), JohnS (7) and PlayerB (8).
None of the missing BBs have anything to worry about in terms of being miles behind from the get-go!
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