We immediately knew that something wasn’t right when we turned up at Winter Hill to see a large group of golfers milling around close to the 1st and 10th tees and, lest we thought that we were going to sneak up to the head of the queue, we were rapidly and firmly informed that there was at least an hour’s delay in starting tee-times. We quickly took the coffee option sitting in the window with a clear view (well as clear as the fog would allow) of the milling crowd. The clubhouse was crowded as well with golfers having another breakfast, early lunch or a simple coffee. With the massed ranks of trolleys outside it was reminiscent of skiing days when you slightly worried that someone would make off with your skis but in this case it would be golf clubs.
All the while our organiser MikeS maintained a close watch on proceedings and finally got us off the 10th by 11:15 which was very good in the circumstances. The late start meant that we lost some players – PeterR had to go and deal with the Xmas tree and RobM had an eye infection which he felt would not be improved by the blinding low light so 7 of us were left to do battle which was just as well as Mike only had 2 tee-times although in the chaos, if 16 of us had started off no-one would have been any the wiser.
The balls fell so that Mikes S & W plus RobA formed the 3-ball and Stuart & I and Bill & Roger (the 2 buggers) followed as two 2-balls. We were playing an Autumn (aptly the season of mists etc) League match with the normal team game alongside.
What soon became very apparent was that Winter Hill was in excellent condition with nary a worm-cast in sight and therefore no mud and fairways in very good condition. It is said that they have an approved method of driving the worms away – it would be good if this became common knowledge across the Thames Valley golf courses. The greens were running very smoothly despite looking very lush. There was even a thought that the bunkers, although they looked like Southend beach after the tide’s gone out, were still more playable than Temple’s.
Before we started, knowing that RobA and Roger had to stop after 9 holes due to the late start, we agreed that the competition would be over the first 9 holes – in our case now the 10th to the 18th. There really was not a lot to report about the golf over these holes – except for the difficulty we all had playing straight into the low sun.
Every tee-shot had to be watched by the other three golfers who would try to reach a compromise agreement (much in the news at the moment but no Trump in sight) on where the ball might have gone. Playing a fairway shot when you were nowhere near a team-mate was altogether trickier. You knew that, if you looked up, you wouldn’t be able to see the ball but this knowledge resulted in you looking up before the shot was complete with the result that many such a shot was topped – this could work out quite well because you could see the ball running along the turf.
Stuart was having serious problems getting his wedge shots airborne but the thinned result was often very good as the ball often scuttled along the floor up onto the green – I have to say that Stuart looked quite embarrassed at these unexpected results but I didn’t mind because he was my partner.
We completed the front 9 in broad sunshine and found that it being 1:30pm we had plenty of time to tackle the “back 9” (1st to 9th hole). The two Mikes were just in front of our 3-ball and we just played without any competition in mind. Stuart somehow lost his earlier tendency to pull his tee-shots and thoroughly enjoyed the 19 points he scored as a result – hopefully that tendency, which he has been trying to cure with the help of Luke, is now a thing of the past and normal Stuart-service is resumed!
Back in the jolly clubhouse at about 15:40pm we had time for a mid-afternoon sandwich and I abandoned my previous plan of heading to Waitrose. The scores revealed that the 3-ball had been victorious again and made off with all the BashCoins:
MikeS, MikeW & RobA 19
Richard & Stuart 18
Bill & Roger 11
The league scores were:
MikeW (19), Richard (16), MikeS (14), RobA (13), Roger & Stuart (11) and Bill (7).
There is one game left in the Autumn League and, although MikeS has one hand on the trophy, MikeW and Richard are still in with a shout next Wednesday.
