With the 5 Ballbashers turning up for lunch heavily outnumbering the 3 Ballbashers who played golf (of which more anon), Mike S was perfectly correct in observing that we seemed to be turning into a dining club with a small golfing offshoot.
But with the additional ornamentation of a pair of crutches and the talk very readily turning away from anything remotely intellectual to that subject most dear to our hearts – the health and wellbeing of the Ballbashers – we more closely resembled some sort of self-help support group, at which you can easily learn about the best laxatives, hospital breakfasts and knee surgeons. There are very few mechanical ailments or tablets that have not been experienced by one Ballbasher or another. If anybody is fit enough to make it to the starting line, the Prosthetic Cup could be the best attended trophy competition of the year.
To be fair, Nick and Rob had intended to play but the ban on buggies following heavy overnight rain had definitely influenced Nick’s decision not to play. He is off to Venice today and did not want to risk damaging his knee lest he be confined for 3 days to travelling round Venice in a gondola being forced to listen to a failed operatic tenor punting him around to the continuous strains of La Traviata.
As for Rob, who played tennis on Monday, I am not sure what kept him from enjoying the prospect of a rainy day’s golf in the mud. JohnT also had to abandon hopes of play for the lack of a buggy.
That just left Peter R, Bill and myself standing on the veranda of the Pro Shop studying Home and Dry and trying to convince ourselves that the current heavy shower was the last of the day and so it proved – it is usually the case that putting on the complete rain gear will stop it raining on the outside at least – the greenhouse effect of the rain gear in the sunshine is inclined to increase the perspiration on the inside.
I was keen to find out if my putting woes of last week, whereby I could have let my mind wander towards a diagnosis of the yips (non-qualifying for the Prosthetic Cup if anyone asks), were safely behind me. By the time we came off the 17th I was sure that they were, but then I nearly drove the 18th green and took 4 putts to get down from 3 feet off the front edge of the green (it was a white pin) and left it not so sure. I was n’t yanking the ball left or right but rather over-hitting every putt by some distance so it’s probably a newly discovered problem.
Bill peaked at the downhill Par 3 8th where he hit a fantastically high drive which descended from the heavens to plop down 6 feet from the pin, there to stay. The divot was amazingly deep so it was quite surprising that the ball did n’t plug. From there he very nearly got 5 points but left the green very happy with 4 which added 50% to his then score. Overcome with the post-adrenalin slump following this triumph, he blobbed the next 4 holes and then decided to retire from the field and join the dining club.
Apart from the 3rd where he had somehow converted a majestic drive into a blob, Peter played very steadily to garner 16 points on the front 9. He would have had similar on the back 9 but he visited every tree and the hedge on the 11th for another blob but overall he and I ended up relatively satisfied with our 31 and 33 points respectively. With MikeW away I had already won the Frostbite before we started but Peter’s result pushed him up into a solid 3rd in the League.
The two of us then managed to squeeze ourselves around the table joining the dining club members and golf was forgotten as tales of masochistic physiotherapists bending legs into positions they had n’t been in since birth, were exchanged. Mike S had bought himself an exercise bike and was only saved by the intervention of the gardener from failing to assemble it, let alone ride it. It seems that you have to start off riding it backwards which was something we could do as teenagers but I shudder to think of the results, other than more profits for the surgeons, of our 80+ year-old brethren attempting the trick of sitting on the handlebars.
Next week it’s the Snowdrop Tankard followed by the Spring Cup and with daffodils everywhere, it may be that we will soon see the back of winter and buggy bans and, once again, we will return to being a Golfing Society!
