Today we welcomed Roger back to golf following his time off being fitted with more metalwork to guarantee entry into the Prosthetic Cup followed by a nasty encounter with a nasty dog when popping into Countrystore. It has to be said that his driving and putting showed no adverse effects from these two medical episodes.
It was a Novelty Game today and since there were 8 playing, it gave us an opportunity to play Canadian Greensomes which we rarely have the right numbers for outside the Ryder Cup tour. In this game you play in pairs, you both drive and play your own ball for the second shot and then the pair must choose one of the two balls to play on with and they take it in turns to play until the ball is “holed”. The only marginally difficult rule is that if Player 2’s ball is selected then Player 1 must play the first shot with it and vice versa. The pairs play off 3/8th of their combined handicap but these days the complexity of that bit of maths is taken care of with an iPhone calculator – this guarantee of accuracy does not prevent complaints about the iniquity of this calculation continuing long after the game is finished.
The only bit of stress that could occur in this format is when, after your partner has played two magnificent strokes up the centre of the fairway and you are faced with an easy chip up the middle of the green, you manage to plonk the ball straight into the nearest bunker. At this point it is best to move swiftly out of earshot while your partner assesses the sand-less lie.
RobM and I were partnered and playing with MikeW and Roger who were travelling around the course in a buggy together as though they were a couple of OAPs (which they are) out for a Sunday drive in a charabanc. They were engaged in busily putting the world to rights (Winter Fuel Allowance etc) halfway up the 11th waiting for the other two pairs in front of us (Stuart + RobA and MikeS + Bill) to clear the green, while parked right next door to where MikeW’s second shot had come to rest when they somewhat lost the plot. While Roger wandered across the fairway to where his second shot had come to rest, Mike played his own ball up onto the green. This was swiftly followed by Roger playing his ball into the greenside bunker.
It took a while for them to grasp the point that RobM and I were making – namely that they should only be playing one of the balls and also that the wrong player had played each of the balls as well. Rob and I were so many points ahead of them at this stage that we took pity and allowed them to correctly play a ball from where Mike’s second shot had finished from where Roger put his onto the green as well. MikeW was in particular still puzzled by this turn of events when he reached the green and wanted to choose between the three balls they now had in and around the place. At this point Rob and I were firmer. One does not like to think of senility entering our already copious list of handicaps so we settled for baffled old dodderers even though they had the last laugh by scoring 1 point to our self-inflicted zero.
They had for some time been conducting a form of psychological warfare with their encouraging comments about how well Rob and I were playing and all of that claptrap about how bored we must be playing the ball from the centre of the fairway or chipping the ball stone dead (Rob) – psychobabble as Rob described it.
This eventually took its toll when Rob hooked a drive high and mighty over the trees along the left-hand side of the 14th hole. The A404 is very close at this point and we were all convinced that the ball must have easily reached it. There being no resultant screech of brakes followed by a mighty bang, we wondered if it might have landed in the back of a flatbed truck and be well on the way to Birmingham and what the rules would say if we played our second shot from Warwick Service Station. Stuart later put a dampener on this jolly prospect by pointing out that as far as he knew the A404(M) and the M40 were clearly out of bounds. Either way Rob was relieved not be in the dock on a manslaughter charge. Despite the distraction of this prospect, Rob chipped my ball virtually stone dead and we scored a par which put a temporary stop to the psychobabble.
The BBC had forecast heavy fog in the morning but no such thing happened and we enjoyed a really nice Autumnal day’s golf. Perhaps they were predicting fog in Ballbasher brains?
The denouement was enjoyed yet again over Temple’s excellent soup and prawn and avocado sandwiches etc and we all agreed there was precious little point in thinking of playing anywhere else if we wanted decent ground conditions to play on.
The scores were as follows:
RobM and Richard 19 + 15 = 34 (won all the BashCoins)
Stuart and RobA 14 + 14 = 28
MikeS and Bill 15 + 12 = 27
MikeW and Roger 11 + 12 = 23
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