Since they put the visitor green fees up to £75, Harleyford no longer deserve our patronage and this trophy, which we played for at Hennerton last year, when Bill was the winner, should very definitely be now known as the Summer Plate.
Before I forget to mention it, on Sunday 13th September 2026 the average age of the Ballbashers will be 80 and by some sort of divine/bizarre coincidence MikeW will be 80 on the very same day so, wherever you are, you can enjoy 2 toasts!
Yesterday we were playing for the Plate in beautiful golfing weather – nicely warm with a strong’ish breeze – on the parched fairways of Badgemore. Six BBs turned out and the balls fell so that Alan, Bill and MikeS formed one 3-ball and MikeW, Stuart and myself the other.
We did not get off to an auspicious start. I drove first and rammed my ball hard into the hedge alongside the 1st tee from where it miraculously rebounded to finish about 30 yards away in the middle of the path leading up to the fairway. MikeW then drove off and hit his ball further along into the same hedge from where it, too, rebounded back into the fairway rather better than mine about 60 yards away. Our 3rd man Stuart then stepped up and showed how it should be done with a magnificent drive country miles up the fairway.
I took a fairway wood for my second shot and the ball never left the ground while travelling about another 140 yards up the middle of the fairway to a point where I had a clear view of the pin and the large bunker in front of it. And now I reached for my newly acquired 9-wood imagining a towering shot crossing the bunker to land softly on the green about 8 feet from the pin.
Instead of which I mishit the ball which never left the ground while travelling through the trees to the left of the green before encountering a large bank which delivered it round to a point 8 feet from the pin in the middle of the green from where I was putting for a par. It would be nice, but improbable, to say that’s what happened but sadly it took me 2 putts for a very unlikely 5 for 2 points. MikeW did something fairly similar. In the meantime Stuart of the mighty drive had put his second shot into the aforementioned bunker from whose grips he never escaped leading to a blob.
The lesson was obvious – the quality of the shot would have very little bearing on the scoring apart from when we were putting on the green. As long as you whacked the ball hard off the tee and along the fairway scoring shouldn’t be a problem. The rock-hard landscape would govern all.
By halfway we had worked out that we only really needed a 3 or 5 wood, a 7-iron and a putter and perhaps a sand wedge to cope with the bunkers. All the other clubs had no more chance of travelling a couple of hundred yards than each other and, given MikeS’s dedication to putting from anywhere within 100 yards of the green, he could have left the 7-iron out. I wasn’t playing with him but he probably just used the driver and the putter.
We continued on our happy and erratic way. MikeW was on the Par 5 3rd in 3 and then took 4 putts and followed that on the dogleg Par 4 4th hole with a huge second shot over the mound to the distant green and found his ball 6 feet from the pin and sunk the putt for a 3 for 5 points. Stuart’s driving oscillated between majestic shots down the middle with a slight draw going 250 yards or so and rank hooks into whatever boondocks were on the immediate left – he often found these hooked balls, presumably because of the practice he gets.
I spent my time going through my bag in search of any club which would get the ball satisfactorily airborne before finally coming to the realisation that, on the ground or airborne, made not a jot of difference to the distance gained apart from when negotiating the pond in front of the 18th where I finally managed to hit a reasonable 9-iron solely because my ball had come to rest on a few stray blades of grass with a fortunately clear view of the green.
As a team we scored exactly the same on the front and back 9s and retired happily to wait on the terrace under the spreading wisteria for our other group to turn up. Despite then having 2 players in a buggy, this took them 40 minutes for reasons they struggled to explain other than they had spent time looking for balls but they were happy and that’s all that matters really.
Our team scores were really close as usual:
MikeW, Richard & Stuart 41 + 41 = 82
Alan, Bill & MikeS 41 + 36 = 77
Following his triumph last week in the Brown Jug, MikeS once again put all the other younger BBs to shame and took home the Summer Plate with a fine display of ultra long-range putting:
MikeS (38), Richard (37), MikeW (31), Alan (30), Stuart (28) & Bill (27).
NPin2 balls were won by MikeW, MikeS & Richard
We all enjoyed Badgemore despite the hard conditions because of the variety of holes and the quality of the greens not forgetting the very reasonable county-card holder’s green fee – no doubt we will be back.
Be First to Comment