With Ashley suffering from arthritis (not surprising in this chilly wet weather) and MikeW reporting for duty in a very unfit state and wisely deciding to return home for some molly-coddling on the sofa with something hot and full of whisky, we were educed to two teams of 3 players to compete for an Ashley special Snowdrop “Tankard”.
JohnS chose this as his first day back after winter hibernation but I can imagine, that on reaching howm afterwards, he elected tog o back into hibernation for a few more weeks. We had all seen the forecast and knew that windy, cold rain was predicted to arrive by 11.00am by that very reliable Home and Dry app. But, nonetheless, being brave and idiotic optimists that we are, we still decided to sally forth.
The balls were thrown and fell so that MikeS, JohnS and I formed one team and RobA, RobM and Bill formed the second team. The competition was based on taking the 2 best scores out of 3 on each hole.
We drove off and, as per normal on the first hole, saw my drive head rightwards into the trees on the right, John’s drawn or rather hooked into the trees on the left and Mike’s at least go straight down the middle. Our scores on the first 3 holes were not promising e.g. on the 2nd hole we had the choice of choosing two out of three 1-pointers – it made it easy on the maths side but was not what was needed for the team score.
What was needed was a slice of luck and that duly arrived on the 4th hole where my approach shot from 120 yards hit the pin and dropped 3 inches behind it for a 3-pointer. This seemed to act like a cattle prod to the team and John, who had clearly just been calibrating his golfing systems after the winter lay-off, suddenly went on a scoring spree and clocked up 3 pars and a birdie in the next 4 holes. He was backed up by me and Mike each scoring pars on these holes, and, by the end of the front 9, we found we had clocked up 42 points with 29 of them on the last 5 holes.
This turn-round unfortunately also coincided with the arrival of the forecast freezing wind and rain. After the 10th were very wet and losing touch with our fingers, and after the 11th were even more cold and losing touch with other outlying parts of our anatomy – in fact we were convinced that we had seen some helpful brass monkeys in the trees on the right of the 11th. We then decided that we could finish on the 14th where there is an easier stroll up the hill to the clubhouse but we were left with the puzzle of how to tell the other team who were out of sight behind us.
This proved not to be a problem for when we were halfway up the 12th we saw them struggling up the 1st fairway heading for the clubhouse. We decided that was an excellent plan, finished the 12th and headed up the hill.
Back in the clubhouse we found everyone suffering from freezing fingers etc but we were greatly warmed up by the sight of Ashley arriving with the “Tankard” in the shape of three bags of Italian food goodies.
We decided to base the competition on the 10 holes completed by Team 2 and found that the scores were:
Mike S, John S and Richard – 46
Robs A and M, and Bill – 34
So at least some of us returned home happily with the only sort of trophy appreciated by our general managers back home. As for my golfing gear – it is still drying out.
