Last updated on August 5, 2021
Following sundry dropouts we were reduced to 5 in number at Huntswood for the 4th Eclectic of the season – on the plus side, this presented an opportunity for the 5 attendees to steal a march on the 10 non-attendees by grabbing all of the low-hanging fruit at Huntswood.
At 1000 yards shorter than Harleyford, 700 shorter than Farnham and 500 shorter than Temple, it should be clearly easier to score pars and birdies at Huntswood than anywhere else. However, as always in golf, there is a gaping void between what should be possible and what actually happens – not for everyone though as we shall see.
The balls fell so that Rob and I were partnered and set off first followed by MikeS, JohnS and JohnT. Itr became immediately apparent that the 4-ball in front of us were occupying a different golfing planet to Rob and myself. Each of the 4 took as many practice swings before each shot as any of the Pros currently down in St George’s and when it came to putting, no angle of observation was left unobserved. However, since they hit their drives a country mile straight down the middle, it was clear that they were very good golfers of which more anon.
They offered to let us through on the 4th tee but thinking, incorrectly as it turned out, that we would then run straight up against another such group of tyros, I declined the offer saying that we could be interested in the future if we ran out of things to talk about. Another 10 minutes spent watching their practice swings and putting routines quickly convinced us that, whether or not we were short of conversation topics, we wanted to get past them and so we were let through on the 5th tee.
The usual result of being let through off the tee while being observed by a clearly superior group of players is that you hook, slice or top your drive. But in this case Rob and I flew the Ballbasher Flag with honour and we hit our best 2 drives of the day straight down the middle and strode down the fairway with them where we learnt that they were playing some sort of area final match to see which pair would go through to the Regional Finals. I thought that, having observed our drives, they might offer to let us go in their stead but the next shots we hit probably convinced them otherwise.
Anyway, on we went missing opportunity after opportunity to score 3-pointers. Rob had bought a different putter with him in an attempt to rectify the putting flick twitches he is inclined to suffer from and in the vacant spaces of time and green we now enjoyed, we practiced short back-swings and accelerating follow-throughs and, when it did n’t matter, the improvement was enormous. He now has an absolutely flat practice putting green at home in the shape of a Bocce court and we should expect great leaps forward in Rob’s putting in the future.
We finished with a total of 15 points in 3-pointers between us and retired to the clubhouse thinking, correctly, that it would not be sufficient. About 45 minutes later the competitive 4-ball appeared on the 18th green and after much consideration one of them sunk a long birdie putt and the other team missed theirs and that apparently determined the outcome. They could have saved themselves many hours in the hot sun if they had started on the 18th.
15 minutes later and our other group had finished and, having learnt that they had beaten us by a country mile (11.66 to 7.5) with at least two 4-pointers on their card, Rob and I left having enjoyed a very nice day in the sunshine even if our eclectic scores will not leap forward unlike Mike’s I would guess which may well now be out of sight.
We are now all looking forward to a jolly time beside the seaside battling for the coveted Sand Bucket.
