Glassy greens greet the BBs at Maidenhead

And, boy were they quick! I would guess that, in our 3-ball, each of us could have had another 9 points on our score if only we could have coped with the speed of the greens/learnt from our previous putts.

I was partnered with Alan and Nick and following along behind us were Bill partnered with Rob and the 2 buggy riders, MikeS and PeterR, by chance partnered with each other. I should say at this point that the weather was absolutely perfect for golf and offered no excuse for the low scores achieved on the day.

At some point just after halfway round, Alan started to develop a theory as to how he might close the gap between where his golf happened to be today and his ambition to be a scratch golfer or, perhaps more realistically, how he might get his handicap below 20.

He brought to bear on the problem that shrewdly analytical brain which must have attracted Her attention in times gone by. He decided that if we were to subdivide the possible causes of a duff result from a golf stroke into sub-categories, then we could focus on each sub-category and eliminate the types of error contained therein. Bingo – a true Eureka moment with no bath water involved.

He advanced the theory that the sub-categories might reasonably be:
1. Strategic Errors – these range from turning up at the golf course in the first place, through choosing the wrong club for the circumstances e.g. a 3-wood out of a bunker, to attempting to read the borrow of the greens. They are quite clearly under our control and simple to rectify. Alan was of the view that these cost him about 5 points today.
2. Technical Errors – these range from missing the golf ball entirely, through lifting the head halfway through the downstroke, standing too close or too far away from the ball to thicking, thinning, toe-ending, topping, slicing, fading and hooking the golf ball. Plus hitting the putts about 50% too hard. Alan was of the opinion that these eminently correctable technical errors cost him about 15 points today and focussing on each of them in turn might only take him 50 rounds or so to achieve his goal.
3. Bad Luck – we are now in the realms of the un-correctable. Examples being when, having corrected your strategic and technical errors, your perfectly struck ball ends up in a bunker. There is, of course, no such thing as Good Luck in golf – only brilliant play.
4. The Whim of the Golfing Gods – don’t even think about trying to deal with this category. With golf being played all around the globe 24 hours a day, we don’t have a clue as to which denomination of God might be on duty at any given time and a sacrifice which suits the Hindu God of Golf is unlikely to go down a storm with the Pagan God of Golf. Anyway they normally only turn up on the 18th hole after a terrible round and award you a par to encourage you to come back for more torture (Strategic Error No.1).

I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to decide whether or not this analysis will help you in your efforts to improve your scores – it is possible to argue that everything comes down to Category 4 and we have no control over that, so Hit and Hope is the best alternative.

Today everyone experienced several instances of taking 4 putts from about 8 feet away from the hole, the problem being that the second putt was usually also 8 feet from the hole but from the diametrically opposite side, the 3rd putt would be 4 feet from the other side and the 4th putt might go into the hole or might miss. Sort of like clock golf. The scores reflected this:

For the Brown Jug: Richard (29), PeterR (25), Nick (24), MikeS and Rob (23), Alan and Bill (15).

For the Team BashCoins : MikeS and PeterR: 17 + 19 = 36, Alan, Nick and Richard: 17 + 17 = 34, Rob and Bill: 15 + 12 = 27.

LD: Rob
NP: MikeS
NPin2 : Nobody

Maidenhead Golf Course was in excellent condition and the speed of the food service and quality of the food exemplary, though Nick’s choice of a baked whole camembert is probably still exercising his digestion. He did reveal hitherto unknown expertise as a barista, though his concern as to whether or not he had managed to put any coffee into the cups under the cappuccino foam suggested a lack of self-confidence in this role.