Before I get onto today’s golf I feel a need to share with you some of my learning from having watched the world’s best golfers at The Open at Portrush over the weekend. The first thing is that they are brilliant wedge players without any concerns about how their ball is lying. The second is that putting is obviously a very difficult skill even for those who spend about 5 minutes assessing the borrows between them and the hole. The last is that if we hit the ball as hard and fast as they do we would lose about 18 balls a round off the tee – wherever I stood I could not see the ball as it flew off the tee at 180mph.
As for today, we played the Choose 10 (2-balls) or 15 (3-balls) scores per each 9 holes format and divide the totals by 2 or 3. This is a format which has proved itself time and again to be great fun and to produce close results.
Nick & I were drawn as a pair playing with the other 2-ball of Stuart & Roger. The 3-ball in front of us comprised MikeS, Bill and RobM.
Nick and I got off to a steady start with a couple of 2-pointers in the bag on the first 2 holes while Stuart and Roger banked zilch but declared that their strategy was going to be high risk with a plan to count only 3-pointers for a while. Having got one on the 3rd where we scored nothing they announced themselves to be on-plan. However when I stuck a 130yard 7-iron into the hole on the 4th for an eagle and 5 points they re-appraised their plan and took every 2-pointer that came their way.
Faced with having to take 3 scores out of the 4 available on the 8th and 9th and pretty sure that scoring anything on the 9th was going to be difficult, Nick and I decided to take my 2 points and his single point on the 8th. This lack of self-confidence was to cost us dear for, as it happened, and totally against all common sense we both scored 2 points on the 9th and could only take one of them. This resulted in a tie on 23 points with Stuart & Roger rather than a 1 shot victory for us. They felt quite smug about their choices.
On the back 9 Stuart unleashed a hail of 3-pointers – 4 out of the first 5 holes. We hung on but only by dint of taking one more score than they did. Pressure really mounted when they both failed to score on the 17th and stood on the 18th tee with 2 scores to take on 20 points while we had 22 but only 1 score to take. I rather regret saying to Nick that we were fine as only one of us needed to score a par on the 18th and they surely would not score 6 points between them. This confidence was shaken when my drive went into the bunker on the right-hand side and I hit the lip coming out trying to reach the green. It was shaken even more when Nick playing his 3rd from just off the green managed to toe-end a putt at 45 degrees to the intended route.
In the meantime Stuart had put his second about 6 feet from the pin and Roger had put his 3rd in a similar position. They scored 5 points while Nick got us 2 which gave them victory by 25 to 24.
As for the other 3-ball, the only contact we had with them on the course came when two of them came back to us to ask if we had picked up their wedges which they had left scattered round sundry greens, during which process Rob declared that he was having an appalling round. This appeared to have shaken their self-confidence leading them take more 1-pointers into their score than the ideal. None-the-less the normalised team scores were very close:
MikeS, Bill & RobM: 10.67 + 11.67 = 22.34
Stuart & Roger: 11.50 + 12.50 = 24.00 (most of the BashCoins)
Nick & Richard: 11.50 + 12.00 = 23.50 ( a very few BashCoins)
A jolly time was had by all including on the terrace afterwards and once again the format got the thumbs-up for future use.
