There having been, on last Sunday, 7 Ballbashers down to play and there being just 3 on the day, namely the 14th February, one can only guess that several BBs woke up in a flat panic on Wednesday realising that they had forgotten to buy someone an appropriate card and rushed off to the local garage in an attempt not to lose an irrecoverable number of brownie points. BashCoins are important but nowhere near as important as BrowniePoints! Robert even made it to Temple before his panic kicked in.
The 3 smug BBs who made it to Temple instantly lost their smugness when they realised that it was raining, occasionally quite hard. However serious consultation with Home and Dry suggested that, after 15 minutes of drizzle, the rest of the day would be dry and so it proved. There was no doubt that the ground was completely unsuitable for buggies – it was vey slick with lots of mud in places and even electric trolleys struggled to make progress. We found evidence of golfers ahead of us having done a base over apex which does no good at all to our aged knees.
So it became a match between MikeS, PeterR and myself. As it was a Novelty, I suggested that we use the green tees to slightly reduce the walking distance but we continued to use the yellow tee SI ratings which led to unlikely scores on a couple of holes by Monsterputtman.
The first 6 holes were uneventful and we arrived at the 7th with Mike on 11 points, Peter on 10 and me on 9. But the 7th is the first hole where the green tee is considerably nearer the hole and, as a result, we all found ourselves unusually on the green with a chance of a genuine par which Mike duly achieved but with it being SI of 3, his was worth 4 points and though Peter and both scored 3 points, this was not good enough to budge Mike off the lead which he kept hold of to win the front 9 with 18 to my 16 and Peter’s 15.
Despite the muddy conditions Mike aka Monsterputtman had been using his normal technique of putting from anywhere inside 50 yards from the green as long as there was n’t a bunker in the way and he is getting amazingly accurate with this technique. The green tee on the 11th must be at least 60 yards shorter than the yellow tee and once again we were all surprised to find ourselves easily on the green in 2 shots. In fact so easily that we were at the back of the green or, in Monsterputtman’s case, halfway up the slope at the back of the green.
Completely un-phased, Monsterputtman, stroked his ball down the hill, across to the other side of the green, curling to the right to just drop into the cup – that was a 3 for 5 points!! Peter’s 5 was worth 3 points and my 5 was worth a miserly 2 points. This was seriously aggravating. However when I managed a par on the 16th and Monsterputtman failed to sink a 4-footer (reminds me of the tale of the gorilla who played golf but that will have to wait for another time) I was able to draw level.
The 17th is again a hole where the green tee is so far forward you can actually see the fairway and the green. I managed to get my 3rd shot to about 5 feet from the pin and Monsterputtman was miles away but this ball appeared travelling across the green without a care in the world to fall gently into the hole and that was a 4 for 4 points versus my 4 for 3 points. This was getting seriously aggravating!! Monsterputtman now had a 1 shot lead on the back 9.
Now Mike had been regaling us with the tale of last week’s game whereby he stood on the 18th tee in the lead but had plonked his second shot into the bunker to the right of the green from where he never emerged and Alan swept past him to triumph and win bags of BashCoins. The green tee on the 18th is also a long way forward and Mike, in his determination to avoid the right-hand bunker put his drive a long way left so his ball sat pin-high on the bank above the green. I totally mishit my drive but it was in the right direction and it ended on the green about 20 feet from the hole.
So here come’s Monsterputtman’s ball running down the hill onto the green but this time it stops about 4 feet from the hole. I manage to get a slightly fortunate birdie so Monsterputtman now has to sink his 4-footer to halve the back 9 to go with his triumph on the front 9. Now Monsterputtman may like 40 yard putts but he does n’t relish 4 footers and lo and behold he missed to give me a 1 shot victory and thereby no loss of BashCoins.
The scores were therefore:
Monsterputtman 18 + 21 = 39
Richard 16 + 22 = 38
Peter 14 + 15 = 29
Bill joined us for lunch and regaled us with the results of his research into cataract operations amongst the Ballbashers – there almost seemed more operations than Ballbashers and he was happy that the positive results from the research easily suggested that he could go ahead and push Lynne into the firing line before he went the same way.
