Flock of Birdies seen at Temple

And I am not referring to the winter visitors such as Fieldfares and Redshanks or even, for that matter, to the more common LBJs, but instead to those birdies most beloved of golfers and rarely spotted amongst the Ballbashers.

Surprisingly, Robert managed to arrive on the precise second that we were due to tee-off. This was made even more surprising when one considers that he had visited Huntswood en-route to Temple having not picked up the flurry of emails on the previous day which changed the venue and the tee-off time. But there he was, bang-on-time, ready to partner Bill, playing with Rob and myself.

This adrenalin-producing route had an immediate impact when he banged his tee-shot the best part of 250 yards straight down the fairway using his preferred 3-wood. Much to Rob’s and my irritation, he regularly re-produced this shot in the round that ensued. If he had n’t also re-used the triangular route from A to B that he had practiced en-route to Temple, he would have recorded a mammoth score. And this is not a shot he can practice in the back garden at home. for his balls would be clearing Bisham Woods and bouncing up Marlow High St.

Bill had appeared in a slightly pessimistic frame of mind and endeavoured to arrange an agreement with his partner, Robert, that he, Bill, would fund the BashCoin losses that he was bound to incur having Bill as his partner. in my role as the BashBank Head Cashier, I immediately informed Bill that I had no way of making such a transaction and it was therefore verboten – fortunately for Bill as it turned out.

Tee’ing off 45 minutes earlier than us and therefore out-of-sight and out-of-mind were the 3-ball of MikeS, Pete and JohnT. We only came across a couple of them when we returned to the clubhouse and never saw them on the course. It was good news that they were playing, in that it enabled them to add their BashCoins into the pot.

Quite rarely, I had confronted reality and, on the previous day, had studied a Golfing Monthly article on the best golf balls for slow-swinging senior golfers to mitigate the inevitable loss in distance. Whereas I had thought that something resembling a concrete snowball would be better, I discovered that, to the absolute contrary, ultra-soft high-compression balls give the best results. When I discovered that any money won in Temple competitions had to be spent in the Pro’s Shop, I splashed out and bought a sleeve of Srixon Soft Feel balls. The first drive was inauspicious as they had clearly not had my fade in mind when arriving at their promise of extra-straight drives. Of this, more anon.

None of us 4 got off to great starts score-wise and the two teams were tied at 8 points apiece after 5 holes. Of these 8, I had only contributed 1 point so it was not surprising that Rob decided that he had to take charge which he most certainly did by scoring three 4-pointers in a row – as far as I know this is a record and has been duly added to the Record Scores page. Robert was less enthusiastic about this turn of events but we had persuaded Bill to stop his duck-dip when hitting fairway shots and this had such a transformative effect on his scoring that with some excellent team meshing, they almost matched Rob with a run of three 3-pointers . All of which resulted in us reaching the halfway point with Rob/me on 22 points and Robert/Bill on 19.

My Srixon Soft-Feel so far had been an enjoyable experience compared to a concrete snowball, but the extra distance somewhat caught me out on the 8th when I hit a 7-wood clean through the green into the ditch behind. Time alone will tell whether or not this was a one-off.

Robert and Bill continued their excellent meshing on the first 4 holes of the back 9 and had put 11 points on the board while Rob and I had a consistent but unexciting 8. As a side-note, I had discovered that the Soft-Feel was doing nothing for my putting and I had missed at least 5 holes by the merest whisker which would have given us a commanding lead (I know, I know that could haves, should haves and would haves are a hopeless waste of energy!). We did grab a couple of points back when they blobbed the 15th but Robert’s 3-pointer on the 13th followed by Bill’s 4-pointer (!) on the 16th re-established their 3-point lead which they held to the end to win the back 9 by 22 points to 19. The 4 of us thereby completely halved everything.

We were therefore pleased to find that the 3-ball had mustered 18 + 16 = 34 so that we could share their BashCoins between the 4 of us.

Rob won the league contest with 34 followed by Pete (32), me (31), Robert (30), MikeS (28), Bill (27) and JohnT (25).

The weather had once again been very kind to us and a jolly lunch ensued, at which we were joined by PeterR, with much discussion about Boris’s future and other such hot topics of the day.