Five Ballbasher Prosthetes turned out at Wycombe Heights to do battle for the inaugural Prosthetic Cup today at the Wycombe Heights Par 3 course. They were accompanied by three Ballbasher Athletes who scrapped for BashCoins while observing the main event.
The rules were simple – no handicaps applied and it was a medal round with no gimmees allowed so all strokes counted. We did allow the BB lost ball rule whereby a replacement ball could be dropped out in the adjacent 1st cut rough for a 1 stroke penalty.
The draw was made and three Prosthetes, Mike, Bill and Roger, sporting at least 5 metal joints between them were joined by a lone Athlete, myself. The second group comprised two Prosthetes, Alan and JohnT plus two Athletes, Pete and Rob.
The ground was hard and the ball was running so the best strategy may have been to use a putter off the tee – it would certainly have saved considerable time trying to put a tee into the mat and then searching for it after every tee-shot. Apparently JohnT adopted something akin to this strategy by topping a lot of shots, with quite beneficial results.
However, in the main, we Ballbashers like to do things properly and resorted to choosing between a 9-iron, wedge, gap wedge or sand wedge off almost every tee. In Mike’s case, he took the purist route of a sand-wedge with no tee off every mat and easily justified his approach by scoring 3 birdies.
You would not have predicted this result after our tee-shots on the 1st tee – Roger hit his ball 10 yards left into the rough and lost it and after something of a torrid time, finally scored a 9 on the 1st hole – not a great start. Mike and I hit our tee-shots into a tree 75 yards ahead and, while Mike kindly found mine, we could n’t find his and he took a penalty drop and made a 5. Only Bill looked in control with a 4.
There then ensued a hard-fought battle between Bill and Mike and after the 8th hole, Bill had taken 31 shots and Mike had taken 30. Unfortunately for Bill, he then had a nasty tangle with the rough and took a 9 on teh 9th hole – there is more than one way he could have avoided this calamity but in the heat of the moment, one’s sang-froid is inclined to desert one. To further exacerbate Bill’s situation, Mike chose this moment to score his first birdie of the day.
So after 9 holes, the scores in our group were: Mike 32, Bill 40 and Roger 44. I had 31 but I was n’t in the same competition. The two Prosthetes in the other group, Alan and JohnT, had 42 and 35 respectively while the two Athletes, Pete and Rob, had 33 and 40.
By now Mike was committed to thumping his sand wedge at 100mph into the mat and ball on every tee and this routine produced even better results with two birdies on the back 9 and a score of 30. Despite my misguided attempts to persuade Bill all was not yet lost, it clearly was and he added a 41 to his front 9 while Roger had a much improved 36.
Roger’s 36 was quite interesting to the casual onlooker as he adopted a totally different strategy to Mike and hit a whole variety of woods and irons off the tee, finding that the more dire the result, the lower he scored and he thereby produced several pars from impossible locations.
The denouement took place on the terrace while we enjoyed the excellent and attractive service.
Mike won the Cup with a gross 62, followed by JohnT with 77, Alan and Roger 80 and Bill 81.
The Athletes BashCoin competition was won by myself with 59, followed by Pete with 74 and Rob with 81.
I also won all 3 NP prizes but, in that area, the one prize rule was implemented.
Overall the Prosthetic Cup seems like an excellent addition to our calendar and will no doubt see an ever-growing turnout.
