This morning I rather wish that I had written this last night when the world felt like a marginally safer place. What is it about the human race that we contrive to let these power-hunters become our leaders when all that the average human wants is to live in peace with all of his neighbours and enjoy what our world has to offer?
If you feel like having a lighter moment then I suggest that you ask Pete about how the Forresters came to lose a dog the size of a small horse. I could repeat the story here, but it’s far better hearing it direct from Pete.
We were playing another round of the Frostbite League yesterday – again at Temple where the course continues to be in brilliant condition. The buggy store is not in such a bright condition as it has a very large tree resting in its roof and, pending the insurance assessor’s visit, the buggies are not available.
This meant that Mike S and JohnT could not play with the end result that a couple of us have caught Mike up in the league standings and the whole thing is looking too close to call. Bill also favours using a buggy and that was one reason why he could not play but the other slightly more critical issue was that he was dealing, much more promptly than Temple, with the extraction of a very large tree from his bathroom which is making it difficult to have a bath.
So 5 of us finally made the 1st tee – RobertM and PeteF went off first as the pair, followed by RobA, PeterR and myself as the 3-ball playing the team game off 3/4handicap + 1 as normal. Peter immediately announced his return to action with a huge lightly-drawing drive straight down the middle from which position he scored a par.
Reading the score-cards afterwards I can see that this was a Half of Two Halves – by the time both teams had played the 5th, we were leading by 11 points to 9. However Pete then scored a 4 for 4 (!) on the 6th and by the time we had played the 9th, we were level at 20 points per team. We were being followed by another 2-ball who declined our invitation to play through despite the 302yard drive one of them put down the 6th fairway which we observed as we stood on the 7th tee. They seemed very content to stroll along about a hole behind and we did get round in 3 and a half hours so that was n’t bad.
As we know, Rob A has been playing brilliantly but, not satisfied with his recent run of 4-pointers in 3 consecutive holes, he had taken a lesson from Michael in how to hit his fairway woods. To be fair, he did occasionally hit a very good fairway wood, but, for reasons which are beyond the wit of us poor mortals to understand, the price to pay was a serious decline in most other branches of his game. Putting, which is almost totally remote from hitting a 3-wood, seemed to be the most affected.
The weather was once again kind to us but, non-the-less, it did seem to be quite a long way round – perhaps because the three of us were generally taking at least one more shot than we wanted to on every hole on the back 9 and we feared that our efforts would prove inadequate.
And so it proved at the denouement where it transpired that Robert M, having scored just 10 points on the front 9 and blobbed the 10th, discovered where he had put his mojo (aka Player X) on the 11th and rampaged around to add another 19 points to his score on the last 8 holes thereby racking up all but 2 points of their team score of 22.
Pete and Robert, please note that your score was reduced by 1 point by the DisHon Handicapping Sec when he entered your scores into the MW MkIII which finds these sorts of issues – but note that your 22 points was still sufficient to beat our measly 17 by a country-mile so no change to the results. Pete’s score was also found to be 1 point more and Robert’s 1 point less than they thought.
The individual scores, corrected by the MW MkIII were:
Richard (33), PeterR and PeteF (32), RobertM (29) and RobA (24).
We sort of enjoyed lunch in the clubhouse but, as the first 30 minutes were dominated by medical discussions and the second 30 minutes by trying to read Putin’s mind, we all felt that some lighter material was needed for discussion, but, before Pete could once again recount his tale of the Lost Dog/Horse, it was time to leave for home.
The new, improved handicapping spreadsheet (aka The Mighty Wurlitzer Mark III) now automatically checks each player’s Stableford scores against those posted on his card. How it does this would take far too long to explain but suffice to say that, like HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey”, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s developing a level of intelligence that’s greater than its creator.
Anyway, the end result of this new feature is that on several recent occasions the spreadsheet’s discovered that one or more scorecards have been marked incorrectly, including one marked by me, which I thought I’d carefully completed but which I clearly hadn’t.
Once the MW MkIII starts speaking to me along the lines of, “I’m sorry Nick but I can’t do that…” I’ll start getting really worried but, in the meantime, the best way round this problem – which is clearly more common than I thought – is for BBs to ensure that two scorecards are kept by each playing group and that the cards are quickly cross checked at the end of the round.
It won’t take long and it’ll avoid Richard having to retrospectively adjust the game’s results etc.
Many thanks, Nick