Six Ballbashers turned out at Huntswood to play the final eclectic league game and hopefully take Marilyn home for the next year in the hope that the General Manager will turn a blind eye to an old BB’s foibles.
Of the leaders in with a realistic chance of victory, MikeS, JohnS and Richard were present and missing were PeterR, RobA and Alan. Also present were Stuart, Nick and MikeW but they would need to set a new BB record |Stableford score to have a chance. The balls fell and Nick, Stuart and myself formed one team to be followed by MikeS, MikeW and JohnS.
It is fair to say that Huntswood was in pretty terrible condition – the fairways were a mix of raw hard-packed earth and clumps of grass. The greens were the slowest we have ever encountered and the grounds staff were trying to recover the tee’ing grounds and had put out the markers on the nearest patch of ragged grass. It is very tough being a greenkeeper when drought strikes and we just have to hope that this year will prove to be exceptional. After the 3rd hole MikeS suggested that we adopt winter rules which we promptly did though balancing a ball on 2 blades of grass was a challenge in itself.
The hard-packed fairways did of course result in the ball running a long, long way however well you hit it – you just had to hope that you hit it in the right direction.
Ever since Huntswood added the two ponds in front of the 1st green I have been fearful of losing a brand new ball after 2 shots so this time I found the oldest ball in my golf bag to tee off with. I did manage to stripe it right down the fairway and ended up closer to the ponds than I have ever been before – just a gentle pitch of 100 yards to the centre of the green. A thinned wedge put paid to dreams of glory and the ball disappeared into a clump of pond weed in a flash – at least the strategy on ball selection had proved to be correct.
Stuart got off to a flyer with 4 points on the 1st and 3 on the 2nd but then he contracted a severe case of the erratics and a string of blobs ensued. However between us we did manage to garner a couple of birdies and sufficient 3-pointers to reach 26 at the turn.
A recent annual review by my medical centre had revealed the uncomfortable fact that I have shrunk 4cm over the last 2 years – I had wondered why some of the more junior members of my family had been shooting upwards at a ridiculous rate and now I knew why. The impact on my golf is mathematically obvious – like it or not I am now 4 cm nearer the ground and Pythagoras would probably say that the hypotenuse at the end of which my golf ball is found is also some distance shorter. This could account for why I have been frequently hitting the ball with the heel of my club recently. I clearly need to stand further away and if the trend continues I will eventually find myself looking up at the ball on the tee waving the club above my head.
We continued on our way spraying shots all over the golf course and leaving putts halfway to the hole when we forgot that we had to whack them. Nick managed to set a new Ballbasher record in the Unusual Shot classification when he achieved an air shot with his putter. Stuart and I might have thought that he was just taking a practice swing had it not been for the audible groan – to be fair he was off the green with a steep hill to cope with but even so, it was quite an achievement. Going back to my previous paragraph, perhaps Nick is going in the oppositie direction to me and the ball is now further away than it was and he needs a longer shaft on his putter?
It was very nice to finish well – all 3 of us were on the 18th green with a chance of collecting 3 points each or 4 with an outside chance of 4 for Stuart and myself. Sadly, even after 18 holes we had still not conquered the speed of the greens and rather than the 11 points we were hoping for, we slunk off with just 3.
The denouement in the clubhouse revealed that this failure had serious consequences for our BashCoin takings:
Nick, Richard & Stuart: 26 + 18 = 44
JohnS, MikeS & MikeW: 22 + 30 = 52
Instant calculations suggested that MikeS with his 40 points had managed to improve his already leading score by 4 points while my 39 points had added just 1 point to my score and JohnS had added a few but not enough to bother MikeS so, subject to a final check in the computer which later showed that MikeS had in fact added 5 points and won Marilyn with ease, we gave her to MikeS to take home and hide in his study.
Our final disappointment with the state of affairs at Huntswood was when we were told that the food preparation was dedicated to a function in the dining room and we were limited to bags of crisps and 2 slices of lemon drizzle cake.
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