Despite the fact that we were playing a medal round according to the BB Medal Round ruleset, or maybe because we were, all 7 BBs out at Badgemore yesterday enjoyed themselves and particularly admired the state of the course. In our one outing there last year we were driven from the course by torrential cold rain which does influence your feelings about a course but this year we enjoyed good weather until we reached the 18th and the wide fairways were in excellent condition. The greens were very quick but also very true.
All of this was missed by Nick who should have been our 8th player but who unfortunately suffered a puncture about 1/2 mile from home en-route to play. The balls were thrown and the two 2-balls were MikeW & Bill and Roger & Rob. The 3-ball was Alan, PeterR and myself. Due to Peter having parked his buggy at the back end of the line, the 4-ball went off first but we were only occasionally held up and we were happy chatting so it didn’t matter.
To ensure that we got round before dusk fell, we set a maximum to the number of strokes a player could take on a hole = one more than he would score a single Stableford point had we been playing Stableford. The card markers just had to record the number of shots per player per hole and then take 1/2 the handicap off for each 9 holes. The team scores were to be calculated by averaging the nett scores of the players in the team.
Unhappy with his bunker play last week, MikeW had specifically gone off to practice in a bunker before we started – it was difficult to gauge from a distance how that was going with our vision obscured by clouds of sand, but he did report afterwards that he had been in at least 11 bunkers and failed to get out of 10 of them in honour of which I offer you a haiku:
Mike is in the sand.
The G-string is softly aired
His ball is happy there.
Now strictly speaking a haiku refers to a fleeting moment so this application to what was very much not a fleeting moment will probably have me drummed out of the Haiku Society.
While Mike was struggling I was having a bonanza day on the greens – at least on the front 9 in which I sunk about 5 putts from more than 6 feet and the others I left stone dead. The result of this was I managed to score a nett 32 on the front 9. Had I managed to repeat that on the back 9, I would have achieved the BB’s equivalent to finding the Holy Grail which is to go round the course in equal to or less than one’s age in strokes. But golf is always a game of 2 halves and somehow the back 9 saw me hammering the ball several feet past the hole as per normal.
After some alarms on the first 2 holes, Alan was playing in Alan’s normal languid and steady way – in particular on the back 9 where he scored a nett 36. My other team-mate, PeterR, was belting the ball up the fairway but then having a surplus of putts which is not gratifying at all.
Badgemore has an excellent Halfway Hut selling real coffee which is great pick-me-up encouraging the optimistic golfer to attempt to go over the top of the tree on the left-hand side of the 10th fairway which I almost achieved – almost not being quite good enough but as luck would have it, I did get on the green in 2 shots and this was the point where my putting deserted me never to re-appear again.
We finished in a light shower and retired to the clubhouse to calculate the scores. Bill had been keeping all of the scores for the 4-ball and his attempts to work out the individual and team scores did not fill the rest of us with huge optimism. Sadly none of us had an abacus to hand and taking away and dividing can be tough mental work for chaps used to using a computer to do the heavy lifting number-wise. Eventually he arrived at some numbers which seemed to make sense and produced some tight results:
Bill & MikeW 43 + 37 = 80 (won the back 9)
Rob & Roger 41 + 37.5 = 78.5
Alan, PeterR & Richard 37.33 + 38 = 75.33 (won the front 9 and overall)
The individual scores for the Medal Vase competition were:
Richard (69), RobA (73), Bill (75), Alan (76), PeterR (81), Roger (84) and MikeW (aka the Sandman) (85).
The NPin2 balls were won by RobA, MikeW and Roger, all of whom were playing on the front group – clearly those of us in the back group couldn’t cope with the pressure of getting closer than they managed despite some very good opportunities.
I am sure we will be back to Badgemore in the not-to-distant future.
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