The Ballbashers struck lucky twice at Temple today – firstly it did n’t rain for the entire round and secondly, buggies were allowed which came as something of a surprise to Mike who was relaxing in bed enjoying his morning kedgeree when Vlad let him know that he could have one – a buggy that is. Forsaking his kippers, toast and marmalade, lovingly prepared by Mrs S, he struggled out of bed and made his way to Temple.
Not so responsive was PeteF who did n’t let his alarm clock get in the way of finishing his sleep and thereby failed to get to the course before lunchtime.
So we ended up with 9 playing – possibly a record for the first game of the Frostbite League, whose very name gives you an idea of the type of conditions we normally experience. But this morning the sun shone and the cold wind was tolerable, so all was well with the golf-playing Ballbashers. The balls were thrown and the 3 teams were Stuart/MikeW and Rob, MikeS/Nick and Richard, PeterR/RobM and Bill.
MikeS had not played golf for some time due to a combination of the ban on buggies and his crumbling knee so his first hole had the expected mix of a good drive followed by a couple of duffs resulting in a 6 for 1 point. However he then started playing some storming golf and clocked up 21 points by the halfway point.
Nick, who played exceptionally well last week, was being inhabited by Player B with the usual amazing variety of golf shot that results from these visits. He found a way to visit every bunker on the course and also managed an astonishing drive whereby the ball just hopped off the tee and went no more than 2cm to the right. This can surely only be achieved when one electron in the outer rim of the golf ball suffers a brief magnetic blow by an electron in the outer edge of the driver. If we were properly equipped with the right sort of detectors we could no doubt detect all sorts of unknown bosons and mesons when this occurred, thereby saving CERN a few billion euros. As it was we just muttered sympathies. He virtually repeated this feat later on in the round but this time, went 6 feet sideways – most definitely a skill which has a home somewhere, if not on the golf course.
For my part, I inexplicably found that I could chip the ball quite accurately this week, which was a nice surprise following last week’s sad collection of thins and thicks, and thereby I played quite consistently scoring 17 points on both the front and back 9s. This was in contrast to my team-mate MikeS who followed his 21 points on the front 9 with 9 on the back 9. It therefore was not much of surprise that our team’s score, based on the best 2 out of 3 on each hole, sunk from 40 points on the front 9 to 31 on the back.
We were joined at lunch by Pete thereby enabling us to share a happy 30 minutes or so discussing cataract operations during which some of us, who are inexperienced where this particular medical procedure is concerned, were reduced to total queasiness when PeterR explained how his operation was preceded by an injection just below the eyeball with a nurse sitting on his head to ensure that he did not move when the needle went in. He declared that the process was a total success without explaining precisely how he measured this – and as for what the nurse’s rating was, none of us will ever know.
The denouement scores-wise revealed the following:
MikeS, Nick and Richard: 40 + 31 = 71
Stuart, MikeW and Rob: 35 + 34 = 69
PeterR, RobM and Bill: 37 + 28 = 65
The individual scores for the league were: Richard (34), Stuart and RobM (33), PeterR (31), MikeS (30), Rob (27), MikeW (25), Bill (18) and Nick (17).
