It was a grand day for the Medal Vase at Temple today – the course was dry and running fast (not always helpful!), the sun was shining and we enjoyed a warm breeze. It surely could only have been serious prior engagements that reduced the BB numbers to 5 brave souls determined to enjoy whatever the golfing gods threw at them during the forthcoming medal round. As it turned out, it was not so much the golfing gods who caused problems as much as it was the playing partners.
Stuart, MikeS and I went off first, followed by JohnT and Bill sharing a buggy and suggesting they would take a dim view if we held them up.
My second shot on the 1st hole found the left-hand bunker, Stuart disappeared behind the right-hand trees and Mike 3-putted – all standard fare when you are playing a medal round – and we all scored 5’s. I was the first to run into a serious problem when I took 3 shots to get out of the left-hand bunker on the 3rd hole thereby adding a 7 to my first 2 scores of 5 and 6. I fell to wondering if I could score everything from 1 to 9 on the front 9 and whether or not this had ever been achieved. Luckily I failed in this mission and scored slightly fewer on the next holes.
Mike was unlucky to lose his ball on the 9th as his perfectly respectable shot disappeared for good off the left-hand side of the fairway into the boondocks(as it does) and racked up his first 7. Up to then he had been playing very well and had just enjoyed a run of four 4s.
Stuart then gave us the halfway scores – I had 44, Mike 45 and Stuart 46 – but after 50% of our handicaps had been deducted, Mike had 34.5, Stuart and I both had 37.
At this point, while we rested outside the Halfway Folly, Stuart started to extoll the virtues of Mike’s play to-date – his wondrously smooth golf swing would surely put him in the running for a place in the Solheim Cup team, assuming he could undergo the required operations and acquire the necessary long suntanned legs. Mike purported not to hear any of this flattery which he correctly construed as not being designed to improve his performance.
However he promptly put his drive on the 10th into the long hay on the right, lost his ball in the left-hand hedge on the 11th and spent a lot of shots negotiating his way past the 1st green on the 12th. These 3 holes added 23 shots to his score – an impossible blow to recover from, especially when a couple of 7s were added in later.
Stuart and I were then locked in battle and it transpired on the 18th tee that he held a nett 1 shot lead. I drove off first and put my drive a long way down the middle. As Stuart prepared to drive, I whispered to Mike that he would probably put it on the green, the wind being in his favour and all of that. Despite the absolute sotto voce nature of my remark, Stuart seemed to regard this as leaning towards gamesmanship (as if I would!) and promptly drove his ball out of bounds in the direction of the patio. This was an unfortunate way for our battle to end as I finished with a nett 72 to beat his nett 73 and Mike had a nett 78.
JohnT and Bill finished very closely behind us so we were soon able to enjoy the denouement on the patio. It transpired that JohnT had scored 102 minus 30 = nett 72, thereby tying with me. Bill had a nett 80.
So it was then down to the back 9 scores and JohnT had a nett 35 to my nett 34 so the Medal Vase was mine. It was a brilliantly close result all round and a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in the sunshine. Stuart then got pinged and it was back to the real world.
