Following on MikeW’s warnings of tight fairways and Alpine climbing, the Ballbashers approached their maiden trip to Hennerton with some trepidation but, although those warnings turned out to be accurate, all of us went away saying that we want to go back.
Hennerton turned out to be in a lovely, unexplored (as far as I am concerned), quiet area near Crazies Hill. The fairways were a tad parched but the greens were in excellent condition and, at 75% of the Temple course length, the multiple Par 3s seemed to suit us. Heeding the warnings of some steep hills, at least 6 out of the 10 Ballbashers were in buggies and Roger had been given the buggy with the illustrious title of Course Marshall – it came as a bit of surprise to another group of golfers when he asked the way to the 5th tee as they assumed that the Course Marshall might be expected to know that, so perhaps it was a trick question to discover if they had just snuck onto the golf course without visiting the Clubhouse.
After some difficulty stemming from the multiple buggy use, the thrown balls were successfully interpreted into some groupings with Stuart, PeterR and myself going off first, followed by Alan, MikeS & MikeW who were followed by RobA & Roger playing with Nick who was partnered with Bill.
Our 3-ball faced an immediate problem after completing the 1st hole in that we didn’t have a clue where the 2nd hole was and this turned out to be the case after many of the holes, so we did manage to see quite a lot of Hennerton and thereby probably walked as far as we would do normally at Temple whose layout our antique brains have just about committed to memory.
The skill required with narrow fairways and short holes is to hit the ball straight – despite best intentions this does not always line up with Ballbasher capabilities on the day and the despairing cry of “Oh S**t” rung around the idyllic Hennerton parklands on more than one occasion.
The masochistic course designers had also plonked water hazards and ditches where the golfer new to Hennerton least expected them and, on the 2nd hole, I was mightily put out to discover that my drive that just for once, had flown arrow straight at the pin 200 yards away, had come to rest in a ditch lined with railway sleepers which ran right across the front of the green. Later on Stuart’s beautifully struck 3-wood on the 17th disappeared into the bullrushes round a large pond beside the fairway, whose existence was totally unknown to us until we breasted the hill. Elsewhere the fairway slopes always seemed to carry your ball away from the required direction.
But despite all of these traps for the unwary Ballbasher, we all enjoyed it and the scoring was good as well which, given the length of the course, should I suppose have been the case.
The team scores were:
Nick & Bill 26 + 22 = 48 (winning front 9 and overall)
Peter, Richard & Stuart 25 + 20 = 45
Alan, MikeS & MikeW 21 + 24 = 45 (winning back 9)
RobA and Roger 20 + 20 = 40
NP and LD balls were won by Nick
NP in 2 ball was won by Peter
The Harleyford Plate was comprehensively won by Bill with a massive 40 points followed by the rest of us:
Bill (40), Richard (36), Alan, MikeS & RobA (34), Peter (33), Roger & MikeW (31), Stuart (30) and Nick (28).
