The first Eclectic League game in the 2023 season took place at The South Bucks (aka Farnham) last Wednesday and your correspondent has spent the intervening period tramping round the Northern Powerhouse, Manchester. He therefore remembers very little of the game apart from one rude awakening.
We used to work on the basis that, since Farnham Park was the shortest course that we regularly play on, it must, de facto, be the simplest course for us to accrue untold riches in the form of 4-pointer birdies. We would surely arrive at the course with the sole intention of throwing caution to the winds and we would be lashing 5 or 3-woods into the heart of every green and then our gung ho approach would be rewarded by more than our fair share of putts falling into the cup.
Now clearly one of two things has happened. Either they have lengthened Farnham Park by several hundred yards or, perish the thought, the distance that we can hit our golf balls has sadly diminished over the winter. We cannot blame the conditions for our failure to get within close-enough range for one of the afore-mentioned lashed 3-woods because the fairways were in excellent condition – not much run admittedly but a very nice surface to hit off and the greens were not too fast and not too slow.
As it was, only one person – the current keeper of Marilyn, PeterR, scored more than 30 points including one 4-pointer. Nick also scored a 4-pointer and knowing how important 4-pointers are in the long-term, they could be said to be off to the best start.
As far as the team game was concerned, our team of Nick, Alan and myself did think that our combined front 9 score of 12 (3 and 4-pointers only to count) was not brilliant but should be competitive and we were totally disabused of this thought by the opposition of PeterR, RobA and JohnS’s score of 22. However their collapse to 6 points on the back 9 was 1 shot worse than our pathetic 7 so we won the back 9 and they won overall.
I expect that mid-summer will find us complaining that the ball is running too far on the baked surfaces but, hey ho, it’s fun to be bashing away again in our attempts to win Marilyn’s favour.
