During the football season the back page of the Maidenhead Advertiser is dedicated to the trials and tribulations of Maidenhead United and the headline score above or anything approaching it has never been seen in the 100+ years of Maidenhead United’s history. However, today, the equivalent of that score was recorded by Maidenhead Golf Club against some struggling Ballbashers.
Considering that RBWM are about to turn it into a builder’s wasteland, the course is in absolutely amazing condition. The greens are probably the fastest and truest that we play on and thereby lies the rub. If you lost concentration for just a second when waving the putter at the ball, you found yourself perhaps off the green on the other side of the pin, but definitely 6 feet past. I offer that by way of explanation/excuse for the very low scores achieved today – apart from the two players who managed to get slightly more than 30 points.
The draw was made and the first 3-ball comprising PeterR, PeteF and MikeW set off down the fairway virtually unnoticed by the other players who were pre-occupied on the practice putting green wondering how to stop the ball. The second 3-ball comprised Alan, Stuart and myself and the 3rd was Roger, Rob and JohnT.
I made a great start with 8 points after 3 holes and made the crass mistake of thinking that golf was easy. I was not very well supported by my playing companions who managed 3 points between them. This turned out to be the pattern for the rest of the round. One of us would enjoy a (very short) purple patch and the other pair would normally score 1 or zero points to back him up, which, when the team score was based on the best 2 out of the 3 on each hole, was not great tactics. Alan’s purple patch went from the 4th to the 5th.
On the 10th hole, Stuart scored a birdie for 4 points and then he scored 2 more pars in sequence and the team score improved markedly. Sadly, at this juncture, an outbreak of heightism occurred in our team. I have to say that I took no part in this unseemly behaviour which seemed to start when Alan asked Stuart if he had a shorter putter to match his vertically-challenged stature. Stuart rather took exception to this question and they embarked on a discussion as to who was the taller or even harder to prove, who had been the taller a few years ago. Putters were then measured (makes a change from the normal boy’s sport involving size comparisons) and it transpired that Alan’s putter was shorter than Stuart’s which seemed to satisfy Stuart until he discovered that Alan had very sensibly marked the standard 65.5cm Ballbasher gimmee distance on his putter which was just long enough to record it, and this was clearly giving Alan an advantage in granting himself gimmees. The final remark made by Alan was to enquire of Stuart if he had special shafts on his irons. At this stage I stepped in and pointed out that we supposed to be a team helping each other and we continued on our way with only the odd snipe.
At last we reached the sanctuary of the terrace and the very good food provided by Maidenhead. Bill then appeared without any other means of support than his legs and joined us for a drink. He should be allowed to swing a club in about 4 weeks as long as he stops doing acrobatics involving a shooting stick.
The denouement revealed a sorry state of affairs with nobody managing to get the ball onto the Par 3 hole for the NP. Stuart displaced Peter to win the NPin2 and Pete won the LD by dint of being the only person on the fairway.
The team scores were Roger/Rob/JohnT 29 + 26 = 55, PeterR/PeteF/MikeW 33 + 31 = 64 and Alan/Stuart/me 36 + 38 = 74 and a clean sweep of the Bassoons.
MikeW won the Brown Jug (yes he is truly back from his hip op now) with 33, followed by Stuart with 31, me (29), Alan (27), JohnT (25), PeterR (22), Rob (20), Roger (19) and PeteF (18).
Despite the fact that he has not played golf for months and months, MikeS is still leading in the Master Golfer stakes which says something about the consistency of the rest of us.
