It was Ashley’s Summer Tankard day at Temple today and because there were 18 temporary greens, the Ballbashers had the course to themselves in the best weather conditions we have enjoyed this year – sunny but not too hot and no wind to speak of – and the result was the most amazing scoring ever recorded in BB team-play history.
After Nick had pulled out late due to gout or something similar arising from over-indulgence the night before we became 8 players and when the balls were thrown the 4 teams turned out to be Alan & Bill playing with Stuart & Richard followed by JohnS & MikeS playing with PeterR & RobA. The format was Better Ball.
The temporary greens were mostly located on the aprons of the existing greens but the key ingredient for the points-fest were the holes which were at least twice the width of the normal holes and this must have suited the BBs very well indeed. Perhaps we were always meant to play a coarser form of the game than we normally have to do in which whacking the ball hard at the hole without worrying about any subtle borrows is the order of the day.
I will not bore the reader with tales of the birdies scored and birdies missed en-route to Stuart’s and my better ball score of 28 on the front 9 – this is an average of over 3 points per hole and even this turned out to be insufficient. Alan and Bill had scored an equally solid 25 points with brilliant meshing, in which they individually contributed a score on every alternate hole. For some reason hardly a drive went astray and we thereby travelled round the course very rapidly, the charge being led by Stuart who had a luncheon appointment at 1pm.
The 10th saw Stuart triumphant that his drive had actually disappeared into the crater until he eventually realised that the temporary pin was located on the top before you reached the crater. Before we realised the error in Stuart’s ways, Alan had tried to put another 90mph into his swing and, as a result, topped the ball about 80 yards off the tee and I had been most unhappy that my drive was still in view above the crater – of course this turned out to be the right place to be and I racked up a 2 for 4 points. Bill `got 4 for 3 points and after the 11th we were level again.
We continued neck and neck until we reached the 16th on which we all went down in 3 shots but Bill’s was worth 4 points and they took and held a 1 point lead through to the end to win the back 9 from us by 27 points to 26 despite Bill’s regular totally baffling and completely incorrect assertion that they were the pigmies and we were the giants.
So Stuart and I finished with a score of 54 points – averaging 3 per hole – and they with a score of 52. My partner had to shoot off for lunch and I went to the terrace feeling moderately confident that we should be in with a chance of winning one of Ashley’s goodie bags – surely no-one could beat 54?
Well surely someone did beat 54 and it was MikeS and JohnS who posted 29 points on the front 9 and then 26 on the back 9 giving them 55 in total and a 1 point victory. Along the way JohnS, who scored a total of 17 points at Winter Hill last week, racked up 4 birdies.
PeterR and RobA scored well for a normal game with 46 but this was not a normal game at all.
What really sticks in my craw is that, even though Stuart and I each recorded a score of 44 points with 2 pick-ups each, Alan and Bill – the self-titled pigmies (that was from Bill only) beat us on the back 9 to share 8 BashCoins between them. MikeS and JohnS shared the other 16 plus they each took home a mighty pizza-making kit – enough to keep the grandchildren happy for years.
The temporary greens made each hole about 20 yards shorter on average I would say and the holes were only twice the normal diameter which does make them 4 times the normal surface area – that configuration seems perfectly suited to the task of keeping Ballbashers very happy on a golf course and able to produce prodigious scoring.
