We are playing strange golf at the moment with the fairways baked so hard that a total mishit, as long as it is going in the desired direction, will run almost as far as a well-hit shot. Generally speaking the golf course designers site their fairway bunkers where the young tiros might hit their tee-shots and they are of no concern to us senior players but at the moment they are a serious threat to us and several of our tee-shots found their way into unattractive holes full of sand.
Eight Ballbashers turned out to play – we had been scheduled to be 9 but RobA was advised by his management team that they thought inadvisable for him to play in the forecast heat. As it happened there was a welcome breeze that appeared from time to time and we just about got round without any obvious signs of heatstroke.
The balls had fallen so that MikeW was paired with PeterR and Roger with Bill and they formed the first group out. Behind them were MikeS & RobM and Alan & myself and we enjoyed a serious ding-dong of a team competition. At an individual level we were playing for the Brown Jug, a trophy donated by Stanley & Tony Brown in 2000 and won back then by MikeS.
The standard of golf I played in Seaford about 2 weeks ago is now a distant memory and I spent most of the 18 holes trying to retrieve a score after a series of mishits and I was very lucky in my choice of partner as Alan scored four 3-pointers in the first 6 holes. My only moment of brightness was when I discovered that my drive at the 250 yard 4th hole had somehow hit a large mound on the right-hand side which stopped it heading in the direction of the railway line next door and deposited it on the left-hand side of the green from where I managed a 2-putt for 4 points.
Despite MikeS conjuring a 4-pointer on the next short Par 4, Alan and I had a 4-shot lead over them at the halfway point. There had been something of a bunfight over the very limited number of 2 buggies available to us. A society had booked the other 3 but luckily we were there before them and were advised by the Pro to avoid the red buggy at all costs. Hopefully there aren’t 2 members of the society still stuck out in the desert of Sonning golf course with a failed red buggy and no water.
Mike & Robert took control of our competition on the back 9 which wasn’t too difficult given my total inability to hit a fairway shot or a putt in a controlled way – I blame it on the heat – and Alan couldn’t fight them on his own and we arrived at the 18th green all square. I had the golden opportunity to sink a 5-foot putt for victory but, unsurprisingly given what had gone before, I missed it and all square we finished.
We dragged ourselves over to the car park to put our clubs away and finally reached the oasis of the clubhouse where a very cold drink restore some semblance of working order to our dried-out bodies.
It turned out that MikeS had easily won the Brown Jug 26 years on from his first victory:
MikeS (35), Bill and Richard (30), Alan (28), Peter (27), RobM (26), MikeW (22), Roger (21).
Bill’s 30 points are particularly commendable given that he was having to walk the course as opposed to his usual buggy-riding.
The team scores were very tight at the top:
Alan & Richard 25 + 16 = 41
MikeS & RobM 21 + 20 = 41
Bill & Roger 19 + 15 = 34
MikeW & PeterR 17 + 14 = 31
NP in 2 balls were won by MikeS, Roger (his was about 6 inches from the hole) and PeterR (his was 6 inches from the edge of the green but none of us could do any better).
We like Sonning course and clubhouse and look forward to returning when the fairways are green though that, of course, will bring back the currently non-existent rough!
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