Last updated on June 13, 2024
I recall from earlier student days that there was some sort of causation theory which linked the event of a butterfly landing on a rock in the Sahara with Mavis spilling her cup of tea in the Dagenham Ford canteen. This morning we witnessed something similar when the fact that Pete’s mother-in-law’s apartment block’s lift failed resulted in a golf ball landing on the top of my head.
Of that more anon because we should start by celebrating Stuart’s return to proper Ballbashing. His last such round was last October in Portugal so it’s been about 8 months away from the fairways. By all accounts he showed no rustiness at all with some great driving. He ended up on one of the two winning teams so he enjoyed an excellent day and hopefully Sandy will not be able to chastise him for over-doing it – BashCoins are after all BashCoins.
Returning to the question of how the golf ball landed on top of my head – I spent some time last night devising the format that we would play today expecting the 11 players who signed up to turn up, and,more-over, that the 3 buggy riders would be riding in 3 separate buggies. To speed up the working out of teams, I hand-crafted some beautiful little slips of paper detailing the group (1st to 3rd) and the playing partnership that the drawer of the slip would partake in.
First of all Pete sent me an email which I saw as I arrived at Huntswood explaining that he had a nasty blister on his heel which was not going to stop him playing until his mother-in-law’s lift broke down, which was the final straw and he would have to withdraw. Then to sabotage my careful plan that each of the 3 buggies would be allocated to groups 1 to 3, Nick and Bill decided to share one. At this stage my hand-crafted slips went out of the window and I resorted to the time-honoured BB method of throwing 10 golf balls into the air.
Sadly I was not able to monitor the trajectory of all of the 10 golf balls and one of them landed bang on top of my head. I was too late to announce the discovery of gravity and at any rate, in the moment of the strike, I temporarily lost the power of rational thought. I noticed that I did n’t actually experience any pain which tended to confirm the oft-expressed opinion by close female relatives of exactly what it was that filled the space between my ears. This episode was greeted with some unwelcome hilarity by the assembly and then we went on our way.
We were playing the format in which the 2-balls have to choose 10 scores per 9 holes to include in their score, the choice in inclusion being made immediately after each hole has been played. The 3-balls had to choose 15 scores. When it came to the final calculation, the 2-balls divided their total score by 2 and the 3-balls divided theirs by 3.
It all sounds very pressurising but every time we play it, everyone professes to enjoy it and it does add an extra strategic puzzle to the game as to precisely how much risk to take in leaving opportunities to count 3 points scored on the hole by nit taking the 2-points you have just scored. We got caught out once when on the front 9 we ended up having to count a 1-pointer when we had earlier declined a 2-pointer. Luckily it did not effect the outcome for us – we still would not have won any BashCoins.
I was teamed up with Alan and JohnT and we enjoyed the whole round with some good shots amongst us. I always forget that Huntswood has gained some proper water hazards and fail to bring my telescopic golf ball retrieving net. The two ponds which now bar the way to the 1st green have got a year’s worth of golf balls clearly visible from the edge, now including Alan’s ball from today plus, as far as we could tell, unless they were pond-dipping, Stuart’s and JohnS’ balls from the group behind us.
Because we are “enjoying” an arctic summer, we were all well togged up, but the sun shone, the course was in excellent condition with the run of the ball flattering our drives, and we had no-one holding us up or pushing us from behind – it was true millionaire’s golf.
We were able to dine on the terrace where we enjoyed Huntswood’s excellent fare and service. Alan displayed a hidden talent for opening sachets of HP Brown Sauce – despite his denials we were left to wonder if he had a Royal Warrant for this task at early morning BBQs. Mike W took the opportunity to have another English Breakfast – he assured us that he ordered the small version but the only thing it seemed to be missing was black pudding. Following some very impressive arithmetic involving adding up a total and dividing it by either 2 or 3, we arrived at some very close scores:
MikeW, Stuart and JohnS 12.33 + 12.67 = 25
MikeS and RobM 13 + 12 = 25
Alan, JohnT and Richard 11.33 + 12.33 = 23.66
Nick and Bill 8 + 10.5 = 18.5
Last week MikeW was pestering Nick to count the scores for handicapping having my 41 points clearly in mind. Nick refused to do this on the technically complex basis that we played off the red tees and his computer won’t cope with the colour red.
I noticed that, although I did score 41 points again this week, MikeW was noticeably quiet on the subject of my handicap. I would n’t like to suggest that this might have been due to the fact that he scored 41 points as well as I know that he is a man of much higher principles than this would imply.
Next week it’s the Prosthetic Cup and once again the Ballbashers will be trotting out the same old stories of their war wounds and proffering all sorts of dodgy images purporting to show that every part of their body is made of plastic or titanium – not that you would ever guess. Come to think of it, a titanium prosthesis would possibly be cheaper than Viagra.
