JohnS does a Littler at Sunningdale

The 6 Ballbashers who made it to Sunningdale Heath to contest the Ice Bucket enjoyed another great visit there. When Mike arrived early he discovered that the course was at that point closed due to the wet conditions but he was heartened to learn that it would open at 11.00am and that there was no problems with delivery of the bacon baps complete with onion chutney before we tee’d off. The course was so empty when the rest of us arrived that we were able to park in the main car park for a change.

The bacon baps having been thoroughly enjoyed, it was team draw time and Peter R, John S and me were drawn against Mike S, Mike W and Rob M. While Peter R and Rob M were away paying for their rounds, the rest of us had a chat about who might have the trophy from last year and I had to look the answer up on the website where I discovered that it was none other than Peter R and Rob M. We accosted them with this information and Rob confirmed that he did indeed have the Bucket at home and he was rather surprised to learn that we were going to be playing for it today. We may just have moved to 2024 but elsewhere in BB land it’s a case of plus ca change etc!

Peter, John and I were drawn to tee off first so off we went and we were pleased to discover the course to be in eminently playable condition – there were some large puddles around but no mud. A high ball onto a green would, like as not, plug which was better than bouncing miles through. Moreover, once we left the 1st tee, the rain stopped and never re-appeared and we even enjoyed some sunshine.

Over the front 9 we failed to convert good scoring opportunities and we surmised that 35 points as the best two out of three scores on each hole was not going to be good enough. However John S had two brilliant shots into the two NP holes which had been selected on the front 9 – neither of these holes was easy and he had hit 2 steepling shots to within 8 feet of the pins. We rather hoped that the markers that we left behind would ruffle the nerves of the other 3-ball.

We started the back 9 with the first combined team 6-pointer on the 10th and after a 5-pointer on the 11th, I rather stupidly remarked to Peter that if we could score 6 points on all of the remaining holes, then we might have half a chance of winning – we immediately scored just 1 point on the 12th which rather put paid to that strategy. But we recovered to score 6 points on 4 of the remaining holes to finish with a much better 45 points.

The final NP competition was on the 15th hole which had been drastically shortened to 80 yards. I remarked to John that it would be rather nice if he could put his ball close to the pin on this hole to complete his set and, amazingly enough, he did exactly that with a perfectly struck wedge to 6 feet from the hole.

The others joined us for a proper pot of tea in the clubhouse and, after they claimed to have lost the NP markers, we managed to prise out of them the information that John had won all 3 – that is very definitely a new record in BB golf – we often have situations whereby no-one out of 9 players even gets a ball on the green. None of John’s shots were lucky mis-hits – clearly 3 months off golf was just the tonic he needed. He won a sleeve of BB balls for his achievement.

The team scores turned out to be:
MikeS, MikeW and RobM 44 + 44 = 88
PeterR, JohnS and Richard 35 + 45 = 80

So the Ice Bucket stayed in Rob’s hands – perhaps he had known that would be the outcome before the start – he now has to share it with the two Mikes.

At least our 45 points on the back 9 was sufficient to deny them a clean sweep of the BashCoins.