A handy number of 6 Ballbashers turned out at Temple for the penultimate eclectic league game. The balls fell so that MikeS, JohnS and I formed one group and Alan, PeterR and RobA the second. It was sunny and pleasant as we gathered with a prediction of some welcome rain later on – in the event that never happened and it just got hotter and hotter to the point that I, for one, was very happy when we reached the 16th tee and were headed back towards the clubhouse.
The fairways were still rock-hard and I thought I might play safe by using my 5-wood off the first tee in the misguided belief that I would be more accurate, and therefore the ball would be less likely to fade rightwards into the trees as it does normally. I then proceeded to hit the ball with the toe of the club and the ball went directly right and came to rest amongst the very first trees from where there was no view of the green at all. This was a reminder of Eclectic Golf Rule No. 1: Never Play Safe – it never turns out well.
Wandering down the fairway I had the opportunity to analyse my disastrous tee-shot and and work out what went wrong. For me there are 2 important rules for getting a decent drive away – always look at the ball and always follow through. Now I had done both of those on the 1st tee but I had got them in the wrong sequence. I followed through before I had hit the ball with the result that the clubhead is pulling away from the ball a tad early and I only started looking at the ball after I had (mis)hit the thing. The rest of my round was a pig’s breakfast of sometimes getting these 2 things in the right sequence with positive results but more often not doing so and suffering the unhappy results.
MikeS had played two good rounds recently and was at a total loss trying to work out why he was spraying the ball all over the place with the result on the concrete fairways that he lost at least 4 balls as they disappeared into unknown parts of the course. He quite rightly pointed out that if we were allowed to tee the ball up whenever we wanted life would be a lot easier because playing off the hard pack requires skill levels we do not possess. I never worked out which club to use for shots up to 100 yards from the green and I tried every club in the bag from the 3-wood down to the putter – just a little bit of grass on the fairway is all we ask for.
JohnS has always hit running 7-irons from these distances and when he finally got within 100 yards of the green he was able to cope quite well – it was the number of shots he needed to to get to that point which was the problem. I reckon that if he had only been allowed to take a 7-iron and a putter out with him, he would have scored rather better. Speaking of John’s putter, he lost his original one at Seaford this year, and thereby we have lost the Ballbasher Standard for gimme distances – the fraying of the grip on it had meant that if you were playing with John you probably got a 10cm bonus in working out if your putt was in gimme distance – sadly that is no longer available.
I had taken a carefully annotated note out with me indicating which holes were the targets for improving my current eclectic scores. It was another mistaken belief on my part that knowing such data would improve my concentration on these particular holes and huge improvements to my total would follow – sadly the opposite turned out to be true and I suspect that I have not added a single point to my total. Eclectic Golf Rule 2: Never know your current score on any hole – rely on luck as always.
PeterR was the one player on our midst to cope well with the conditions and he scored 39 points which was out of sight of the rest of us – I wasn’t playing with him so I have no idea how he accomplished this miracle – perhaps it was by simply looking at the ball before hitting it and following through afterwards.
Feeling as though I had just crossed the Sahara on foot, I arrived in the clubhouse to find Bill and PeteF there. Bill was able to report a very positive outcome from his recent medical procedure but Pete was still suffering from two parts of an Achilles refusing to join back together and, until they do, he will not be back golfing. Conversation ranged over dealing with catheters to what might the mansion tax look like – you would think we would find jollier topics but they are probably exercising BB brains the most at the moment. Pete’s strategy for the latter is turn his houses into terraced properties thereby hopefully reducing their value. The best news would be if RobA got the job of valuing our houses – his past approach to dealing with the Council Tax valuations would definitely help.
The team scores based on only including 3 and 4-pointers were:
Alan, PeterR and RobA: 25 + 15 = 40
JohnS, MikeS and Richard: 12 + 15 = 27 (lucky to scrape a draw on the back 9)
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