It was Keats who triumphantly proclaimed that Autumn is the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness but as far as I am concerned, if these two facets of Autumn involve running over a whole load of windfalls so that the drive gradually resembles an accident involving stewed apple and a northerly breeze which cuts through any number of layers, then I am 100% for summer however far the ball runs offline.
The first game of the Autumn League saw 9 Ballbashers turn out which makes for a perfect 3 teams of 3 with the best 2 scores to count on any hole plus the single scores counting for the League. I had made the mistake of also entering into the club competition running on the day and lobbed £2 into the Twos competition as well – that’s all a very simple way of saying goodbye to a fiver but I must have been feeling optimistic.
The first hole soon justified my optimism as I and one of my playing partners, MikeS, scored a couple of pars and 6 points for the team. As I remarked to Mike and Peter, my other playing partner, on the way to the 2nd tee, the only way from that score was downwards and so it proved as over the next couple of holes, we mustered just4 points in total. We were back to 6 on the 4th hole but then followed that with missed opportunities on the 5th and so that pattern became apparent – good hole, bad hole, good hole recurring.
When you watch the Pros play on TV their short-range chips seem to involve 2 bounces before the ball stops dead and then sometimes spins back a few feet. Why do ours’ just keep bouncing further from the hole? I suspect that, off-camera, their caddies applies themselves with a nail file creating razor-sharp grooves on their wedges in particular. Also they never seem to thin a wedge shot – perhaps the coverage spares us that common fate? In the main we could knock 18 shots off our scores with the aid of a nail file.
It became apparent that our team-mate Peter was suffering from some sort of dizziness every time he bent down to stick a tee in and balance his ball on the top. Although he attempted to clear his head before taking a swing, the random distribution of his drives suggested that he didn’t always achieve this. He assured us that we shouldn’t be concerned as this was not an unknown problem and since we all walk round the course with one affliction or another we carried on regardless except that I volunteered to tee up his ball.
Now I always play with the plastic tees which are designed so that you can only push them in to one height but Peter uses the wooden tees which are apparently minutely adjustable to reflect the sort of trajectory you feel appropriate for the hole you are on. When I pushed one in willy-nilly and Peter topped his drive, I learnt that I had to push them in as far as the third “S” in the word printed on the side. Now I wasn’t carrying my reading glasses with me and the letters tended to fade into each other so it was quite clear that I may have gone for the 1st “S” when he skied the next drive and despite the resultant dizziness I was soon relieved of my duties.
We continued on our way never quite taking advantage of some good positions on the fairways due to the magnetic effects of trees and bunkers. On the 15th I was briefly inhabited by the ghost of Willie Park Jnr when my 5-iron to the hidden green soared away like a thing of beauty complete with draw – it was perfection. Unfortunately I was using it for a distance that I have been hitting it for a couple of years but Willie worked to his yardages and I was disappointed to discover that the ball lying 10 feet from the pin was not mine and that mine had gone clean through the green into the boondocks beyond, at which point Willie deserted me and I thinned the wedge back through and off the green to very near where I had started. Although my partners scored 6 points I was still muttering obscenities as we went down the next fairway.
Back in the clubhouse we discovered that the three groups’ scores were, as always, very similar and that despite dizziness and Willie Park Jnr we just managed to take most of the BashCoins:
MikeS, PeterR & Richard: 38 + 36 = 74
Bill, Roger & Stuart: 36 + 36 = 72
JohnS, MikeW & RobM: 32 + 35 = 67
For the League:
MikeS (35), RobM (33), MikeW & Richard (31), Stuart (28), PeterR & Roger (24), JohnS (23) and Bill (22).
Tales of the latest collection of medical calamities and political mistakes were enjoyed over the latest variant of mushroom soup and we all went home in a happy frame of mind despite the golf.
