Last updated on June 24, 2021
Eleven Ballbashers plus 1 guest turned out to continue their quest for Marilyn at Temple today. As someone pointed out, eleven Ballbashers is almost all of the fit BBs – only MikeW and Ashley were missing. Pete had invited his friend John from Nottingham to join us – I can only imagine that the reality bore no resemblance at all to the glowing picture Pete must have painted of Ballbasherdom to encourage John to associate with us.
The balls were sort of thrown into the air and Bill declared the following partnerships and 4-balls:
Bill/JohnT playing with Pete/John
MikeS/Rob playing with JohnS/me
Nick/Roger playing with Alan/JohnH
Pete had set off from the tee with the rallying cry to his group that they should get a move-on to avoid holding the rest of us up. The groups left standing on the tee were thus non-plussed when it seemed that Bill took about 10 minutes to find his ball amongst the trees. Various encouraging shouts from the tee of “Fore!!!” and “3 Minutes are up” clearly fell on deaf ears but he eventually appeared heading downhill and, to be honest, they seldom held us up afterwards and the group behind us fell further behind.
The yellow tee-box was positioned right over to the left-hand side of the tee so, confronted with what appeared to be miles of rough to carry, most of us elected to drive our balls into the trees on the right-hand side – familiar territory for us all. The exception to this strategy was Rob who hit his ball straight down the fairway which cause us all by surprise.
Rob is currently playing with a very strange pale pinky-beige rubber tee which he either acquired from Anne Summers or nicked from a hospital operating theatre or from the local driving range. The effect on his driving was quite amazing as he frequently outdrove us all. If he was allowed to use it for every other shot on the golf course, I am convinced that he would become the Ballbashers’ first scratch golfer. As it was, he and Mike played with huge determination and quite frankly blew John and I away on the front 9. At one point Mike scored 5 x 3-pointers in a row and with Rob scoring a 4-pointer and two 3-pointers they reached 25 points on the front 9.
This was actually more than any other team scored on the full 18 holes. However they slowed right down on the back 9 as did John and I. I hit one massively hooked drive on the 16th which is now probably halfway up the M40 in the back of a passing lorry. John bombarded the nursing home off the 17th tee and Mike hit his drive on the 18th almost straight left into the rough – we were getting tired. My cause was not helped by the battery on my trolley giving up the ghost on the 11th hole but that is a limp excuse for the quality of the golf that followed.
The highlight of John’s round was without doubt the discovery of Pyramidal orchids in front of the 12th tee. They must be a hardy breed given the bombardment they suffer from the tee. The photo opposite is of said plant.
The denouement took place on the terrace under a warm sun and the group scores were as follows:
Mike and Rob 25 + 9 = 34 (winning the Front 9 and Overall)
Bill and JohnT 15 + 9 = 24
Pete and John (Guest) 15 + 7 = 22
Nick and Roger 6 + 12 = 18 (winning the Back 9)
Richard and JohnS 12 + 6 = 18
Alan and JohnH 0 + 10 = 10
Pete then took centre-stage to reveal the updated gold-plated Marilyn. He was sure that this tasteful trophy would now find favour with Mrs Reid though Alan seemed to feel that this was even less likely than before despite the frequency of his winning the Eclectic League. Right now Marilyn seems to be destined to finish the season in Mike’s house and given that Mrs Smith liked Marilyn (in her silver guise admittedly), this might be a happy outcome – Marilyn may well appear centre-stage in an ecclesiastical flower display.
