I have to absolutely confirm that, although we played a Novelty game at Temple yesterday and I am nominally responsible for the format , it was very definitely not my suggestion that we should play a Dwarves versus Giants game. Both MikeW and I were astounded when Stuart suggested it, and when Alan agreed, you could have knocked me down with a 6-iron.
This concept having been adopted made it unnecessary to throw the balls up in the normal way on the 1st tee which was just as well as it was frozen so hard, they would all have bounced down the fairway on their own which I will acknowledge before you point it out, dear reader, may conceivably have produced more accurate results than our tee-shots.
We had been reduced to 4 players by the normal litany of medical matters and finally by JohnT deciding, before setting out, that the freezing rain and extremely slippery ground underfoot were not going to be conducive to helping his sore back improve.
Having decided the pairings, Stuart then laid out the rules of his suggested game which is known as the Sunningdale Something. Nobody had a handicap – we were playing scratch golf – but when a pair got 2 holes or more in the lead, the other pair were each given an extra shot on every hole until they had got the opponents’ lead back down to 1 hole. This sounds very simple but it seemed to Mike and me that Stuart gradually introduced more rules the further behind they fell. Stuart, of course, claimed that everything had been made crystal clear on the 1st tee and that may have been the case, but Mike and I were so astounded by the proposed basis of the pairings that we may not have concentrated 100%.
Luckily we did n’t have to use a score-card for this format because it would have very rapidly turned into icy papier-mache which gives you a clue about the conditions when we started. Luckily the freezing mist abated after 5 or 6 holes and we were just left with the challenge of the icy greens and fairways with their totally unpredictable affects on the bounce, direction and distance that the ball travelled. I resorted to using a driver and a 7-iron on every hole plus the putter on the green – that seemed to work OK as a strategy – very Scottish I thought though Alan was putting the ball into orbit so I may have got that wrong.
Luckily Mike had very thoughtfully come equipped with a hammer which initially I thought he was intending to hit the ball with as a way of stopping his fade, but it turned out that it was to help putting the tee into the ground and Alan took this very seriously. Following his experience last week with disappearing tees, Alan had bought some very bright orange plastic tees which were always easy to find but which, unfortunately, almost always snapped at the base so finding them was a waste of time. I imagine that he has 18 less than he started with.
As for the golf, after about 6 holes Mike and I had a 3 hole lead but a steady introduction of new rules by Stuart reduced this lead to 1 by the end of the front 9. Stuart had won back one of the holes on the 8th where he hooked the ball hard left towards the Henley Road but before it struck some poor passing driver returning from Waitrose, it hit the branch of a tree, which before it broke off, re-directed the ball towards the green. Not being in possession of the rules, Mike and I could find no reason for this shot to be declared illegal.
We got our own back on the 10th when Mike drove the green to finish 4 feet from the hole and win with a birdie. I should explain at this point that we were playing off the green tees to shorten the course as a way of reducing the time we spent in the afore-mentioned icy rainy mist.
Once again Mike and I took a 3 hole lead and by now we were very suspicious that this was all part of Stuart and Alan’s game strategy and that somehow, by the time we got to the 16th and we had been given Rule 16.3 SubPara (a), they would be receiving multiple shots per hole and would sweep past us to the finishing line.
In the event this did not happen and we wrapped up the match by 2 up after the 17th. We were then left with completely free shots to the 18th from the short green tee position. I went first and my tee-shot went on a rampant banana-like trajectory miles down the hill. After much jocularity amongst the others, Stuart put his ball down and followed suit only much worse. Then Mike took his turn and, exactly as Nick might have done, took a mighty swish only to see his ball topple off the tee and roll 12 inches forward. That just left Alan who proceeded to fade his ball into the trees. Luckily the screening round the terrace blocks any view any diners might have had of this pantomime.
Feeling very grateful to have finished without any obvious signs of frostbite and with a victory for the Giants over the Dwarves, we retired to the clubhouse for something hot. We had, of course, had great fun out there.
