Yesterday was indeed the last game of the Summer League – luckily there are various other games coming up but the truth is that Autumn is not far away. With most Ballbashers away with a bucket and spade somewhere in the world it was left to 5 of us to contest this final game which was at Temple.
Someone who will remain nameless had planned to go to Badgemore for an 11:40 tee-time but the other Rob had pointed out that this would be fine next week but this week we were tee’ing off at 9:40 at Temple. So all 5 of us turned up at the required time and the balls were thrown and fell so that Alan and I were a 2-ball and Bill, RobA and RobM followed us as a 3-ball playing as always off 3/4handicap + 1 for the BashCoins team comp.
Alan and I were so engrossed in a chat about his recent visit to Liverpool (scouting for Arsenal?) that we had finished the 5th hole before we noticed that we had been scoring very poorly with most good opportunities as our balls flew past the holes on the ultra-quick greens. I promptly put my ball in the bunker on the 6th but Alan took full advantage of his 2 shots to post a 4-pointer which at least put us on handicap.
Standing on the 8th tee we agreed that we needed to do rather better if we were to compete with the other group. Someone must have let the genie out of the lamp at that point because we both scored 4 points on that hole with my drive coming to rest just behind the pin as shown opposite. From the tee I had seen the ball vanish very close to the pin and I have to admit that I did harbour slight hopes that it might have gone in for a hole in one. The ball did not come into view until we were very close to the green by which time my hopes were very high – luckily I had kept them as hidden as I could and the ball came into view as at least a gimme.
These 4 points ended up by taking us just 1 point above our opponents’ score so our concerns had been well merited. We ended the front 9 with 18 points each and we had each contributed an extra 4 points to our team score – all very equitable.
What followed on the back 9 was very similar – we meandered along by-and-large making a mess of any opportunities that we might have had – I did have a little run of 3 holes which I par’red but this was the exception. More typical was Alan taking 4 putts from the back of the 17th and me doing the same from 8 feet on the 18th. Afterwards Alan commented/complained that I had made an slightly critical comment on the 17th – I did n’t remember that at all but, if I did, he was able to extract immediate revenge on the 18th.
On the 17th tee we had again observed that our score of 16 points would surely not be good enough to win and we needed to do better – luckily, while I was taking 4 putts, Alan was only taking one which gave us a birdie for 4 points, once again enabling is to win the back 9 and thereby the overall.
A happy group enjoyed the cool inside the clubhouse with the normal wide range of topics being discussed ranging from solar tiles to hip operations and Bill’s amazingly low electricity bill.
The team scores were:
Alan & Richard 22 + 20 = 42
Bill, RobA & RobM 21 + 18 = 39
The league scores were:
Richard (35), RobM (34), Alan and RobA (30) and Bill (27)
And thereby Richard won the Summer League.
