Classic Ballbashing at Mill Ride

Yesterday we were competing for the Brown Jug and Alan had decided that we would play at Mill Ride. One or two of us had memories of playing there decades ago in a bleak wet setting and were ambivalent about the prospect but we were proved 100% wrong. After we had finished we all agreed that it was possibly the best parkland course we had ever played on in the UK with every hole offering an attractive setting, lakes and ponds in all sorts of interesting places and fairways and greens in fabulous condition.

It also helped that the green fee was only £40 including a tasty bacon butty and that the staff were all very friendly and helpful and an excellent sausage roll was to be found at the Halfway Hut miles out into the North Ascot countryside.

And we had some classic Ballbasher moments.

It seemed that our car navigation systems all had different ideas of how to travel from Cookham to Mill Ride. Alan had kindly given me a lift and his sat nav took us there via a route I would never have thought of including a brief visit to White Waltham. It deposited us outside what I can only imagine was the tradesman’s entrance on the opposite side of the course to the clubhouse. From there we travelled on a narrow tarmac’d single lane across the golf course to the clubhouse – it all looked fabulous in the early morning sunshine and we fortunately encountered no golfers as we crossed various fairways. When we had arrived in a clubhouse we received a call from MikeS wondering if we too were stuck in a traffic jam he had been enjoying for 20 minutes or so.

He eventually arrived which led to a debate over the bacon butties about the various routes we had taken and it seemed that Alan’s proved to be the best – this had unforeseen ramifications later on in the day.

When signing in at the Pro’s Shop, Nick paid for his drinks and then picked up the Pro’s car keys off the counter and put them in his pocket. The Pro was mollified when we explained that we normally were able to keep Nick’s kleptomaniac tendencies under control but once or twice we were not as vigilant as we should be – he accepted our explanation in good spirits and all was sweetness and light.

In the meantime, while we were rescuing Nick from another custodial sentence, John H had managed to put his golf shoes down somewhere and had lost them. A search party found on the floor of the benighted Pro’s shop – by now he must have been wondering who he had let in to his otherwise orderly life. John then found that he had forgotten to put any socks on so the Pro was able to exact some revenge by selling him a pair at Ascot prices.

When looking at the course planner in advance, I had realised that it was very long indeed. There were 4 sets of tees available – white (marathon length), yellow (a half-marathon), blue (possibly OK) and red (same length as the Temple yellow tees). I suggested to Alan en-route to the course that it might be sensible and more enjoyable to play off the red tees and he agreed and so we did. Of course, historically the red tees were only used by the lady golfers and heaven help a chap who was seen to be using them – he would be immediately castigated by the ladies and regarded as a rank poofter by his fellow male golfers. Nowadays with gender-based discrimination definitely out of fashion, golf clubs are saying that anyone can play off any tee and some have even changed the colours to get away from the history.

Sadly this message has yet to reach all of the Ballbashers and some were almost ashamed to think that they might be seen striking a ball off a red tee. I explained that I had told the Pro that were a group of non-binary transvestites (hence the name of the group) and that the red tees were our natural home but this feel on a deaf ear or two. None-the-less the shortening of some of the holes did at least allow us to reach one or two Par 3 greens in one shot for the Nearest the Pin competition. I have subsequently thought about the attitudes and have decided that it is nothing to do with being suspected of swinging on the wrong side of the gender divide but more to so with the removal of an excuse as to why you have n’t scored more than 30 points – playing off the whites, you just explain that Anno Domini has removed 50% of your muscle power so it has to be expected whereas playing off the reds, there is no place to hide.

Next up in the classic Ballbashing pantheon was a blindingly obvious and very successful attempt to sabotage an opposition team member. I was teamed with John H and we were in a 4-ball with two of the opposition – Alan and Nick. Over the front 9, John played spectacularly well to score 22 points and I backed him up with 19. The result of that was at the halfway point we were leading them by 25 points to 17. Alan then discovered that they sold Gin and Tonics at the Halfway Hut and he persuaded John, against my entreaties, to join him in having one.

The impact was predictably immediate – having scored 3, 1, 3, 3, 3 over holes 5 to 9, John scored 0, 0, 1, 0 ,0 over holes 10 to 14. He recovered a bit over the next holes as the gin sank into his shoes but he was only able to add 8 more points to his halfway total. It is noteworthy that Alan himself only scored 1, 0 , 0, 1, 0 over the same 5 holes which goes to show that G&Ts and golf make poor bedfellows but you probably don’t need David Ledbetter to tell you that.

We did really enjoy the round particularly seeing cautious Ballbashers laying up and then laying up again to get close enough to a lake to guarantee getting over it only to see their attempts disappear under the water. Nick was not enjoying the best of rounds, Player B was really enjoying himself, but he did have the pleasure of winning a Nearest the Pin in 2 competition by sinking his second shot into the hole. Elsewhere on the course RobM was making friends with a large toad which seemed to have taken a liking to his ball in the rough and Alan had to negotiate with a flock of geese to gain access to his ball to the left of the 18th green – Doctor John would have loved the nature ramble.

Back in the clubhouse we found the 3-ball who had gone off first comprising MikeS, Mike W and RobM and, over a cup of tea on the terrace, we were able to compare scores which were a s follows:

Team scores:
JohnH and Richard 25 + 22 = 47 (winning all of the BashCoins)
MikeS, MikeW and RobM 21 + 18 = 39
Alan and Nick 17 + 17 = 34

Individual scores:
Richard (41), MikeW (31), JohnH (30), MikeS (29), Alan and RobM (25) and Nick (19)

MikeS and MikeW had to leave earlier and when the rest of us left, Nick and RobM who were driving their own cars obviously felt that Alan’s arrival route was so obviously better than their’s that they would follow him (and me his passenger). Sadly we took the wrong narrow tarmac path out of the car park and we wended our way over virtually the entire golf course passing scores of puzzled golfers just about to tee of in remote areas before we reached the greenkeeper’s complex. There, instead of prudently turning round (which to give him credit, RobM did), we spotted another small tarmac lane leaving it on the other side and so we went for another half-mile meandering around the course before we finally reached a dead end where we decided that it was time to turn round. As we did so, we encountered Mick who had been following us with JohnH as his passenger and they drove into the bushes to allow us to pass which we did with a cheery wave. They may well still be stuck there for all I know.

We went back past all of the startled golfers we had encountered on our way out, doing our best to look as though we knew exactly what we were doing, and finally got back to the car park where we spotted the actual way that we had arrived only to see that exiting that way was totally verboten, and so we finally followed the sat nav’s advice and took the main way out of the club, hoping that no-one had noted our number plate.

A classic end to a classic Ballbashing day – we will return to Mill Ride ere long and endeavour to rebuild our reputation.