Having played the first game in this year’s Eclectic League yesterday, I thought I might look the word up in a dictionary and basically found the definition above which seems to me to be totally appropriate for us, of which theory more anon.
The day before, several of us had played in the JFGS meeting in the afternoon and that was followed by a large meal accompanied by the consumption of a week’s recommended alcohol consumption in one night which left several possible players unenthusiastic about playing early the following morning. In addition Alan’s fire alarm had invited the fire brigade to visit his house in the night without advising him that it was doing so and that was a problem to be sorted without delay so in the end there was just 4 of us of which 3 planned to use a buggy and the 4th, JohnS, took no persuasion at all to abandon his push trolley and take the vacant seat.
The Wycombe Heights car park at 9.00am saw us all putting on as many layers of wind-cheating clothing as we could find in the dark recesses of our golf bags because the prevailing northerly was very chilly indeed. Our varied attire could definitely be described as eclectic.
We were greeted on the 1st tee by the very keen South African Starter who gave us detailed advice on the changes to the bunker layouts particularly on the 16th, 17th and 18th to which we listened very attentively as though our club selection would very much reflect this important information he was giving us. Thus briefed he let us set off.
With our joints fixed in position by the cold and encumbered by our multiple layers of clothing, our swings on the 1st tee could definitely be described as eclectic. PeterR lost his ball in the left-hand trees somewhere – which after driving straight up 14 out of 15 fairways on the previous day was a bit of a blow. Bill and JohnS’s drives came to rest so close to the tee that we could almost read the maker’s name without moving and mine went at least 95 yards mostly forward.
We continued up the 1st hole much as we had started it and all checked out of the green with blobs. As always the team competition was based on only adding up the 3 and 4-pointers scored by the team members. We had decided to base the teams on the buggy sharing so I was partnered with Bill and PeterR and JohnS were the other team.
For several holes I thought that I might have to report that we had tied the match with zero points each. It wasn’t just because we all had something akin to the Tin Man’s golf swing – Wycombe Heights is actually a very attractive golf course but the fairways were very grassy and the ball wasn’t running anywhere, unless it was going off the green, so we discovered that even a 350 yard hole was impossible to reach in 2 shots.
Finally Peter and John bagged 3 points on the 6th hole and then that was followed a complete fluke of a 2 for 4 points by myself on the Par 3 7th when my 7-wood tee shot never got more than a foot off the ground and came to rest on the front edge of the green from where I totally unexpectedly sunk the put.
On the next hole we all scored 3 points, some with the advantage of having 2 shots. So our final team scores on the front nine were 10 to Bill and myself and 9 to our opponents. By this point Peter had lost 3 or 4 of the 7 balls he was to lose overall. But despite the very eclectic nature of our scorecards and the cold wind, we were having a fun time – no idea why. We were buzzing along in our two buggies with no-one either in front of or behind us. Despite its location in a Wycombe suburb, up there in the Heights you cannot see any signs of habitation or hear any road noise so we had the place to ourselves for the most part.
The weather started to perk up as we entered the back 9 and I was able to discard one layer. Peter continued to lose his tee shots and reaching any hole other than a Par 3 in regulation was a lost cause but JohnS took advantage of his double shots to go on a run of 3-pointers which proved beyond Bill and my abilities to match. For reasons only known to the golfing gods I did manage to sink 4 or 5 long putts to gather 2-pointers here and there – they won’t be of any use for the Eclectic League but this reversal in my normal putting stats was at least encouraging. They ran out easy winners of the back nine by 12 points to 6.
In terms of buggy playing speeds, we can report that we went round in 3½ hours against the scorecard target of 4¼ hours thus proving that having all 4 players sharing buggies works fine even considering the number of shots we were each having to take. To be fair everyone picked up if they had no chance of scoring anything and lost balls were very quickly identified as seriously lost – the rough being very penal.
As always they provided tasty food in the bar which perhaps accounted for it being a popular rendezvous for mothers with young babies so it was a very eclectic mix of diners for a golf club.
The team scores were:
JohnS & PeterR 9 + 12 = 21
Bill & Richard 10 + 6 = 16
Individual scores:
Richard (32), JohnS (30), PeterR (22) and Bill (19)
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