At 8am yesterday morning we had 10 Ballbashers signed up to compete for the prestigious and impressive Ice Bucket but with buggies again not allowed and JohnS suffering from a back spasm incurred while making the bed (he really need a better maid service!) we were reduced to 8.
Given that the Ice Bucket is a team competition, 8 players is actually an excellent number and we drew lots to form teams of 2 which were Stuart/RobA, Nick/Ashley, PeterR/RobM and Richard/Bill. The weather was set fair at a fine drizzle and the course was only slightly muddy so Better Ball team scores should be expected to be reasonably good but expecting is one think and delivering is very definitely another.
Our group got off to a relatively slow start but it was noticeable that when RobM connected properly with the ball, it was going a long way in the right direction and the same could also be said of PeterR. Bill was intent of having fun getting his money’s worth out of his green fee and my putting was proving very erratic so we were having problems hanging onto Peter and Rob shirt-tails.
This was particularly true on the 6th where RobM hit a colossal drive down the right-hand side, followed by a chip to 5 feet and 1 putt to score 5 points. I was happily writing down 4 points which was only 1 better than our 3 when it was pointed out by the opposition that the birdie entitled Rob to 5. Thereby they reached the halfway mark with 20 points versus our 17.
They continued their excellent meshing on the back 9 and Bill and I continued to have “fun” getting our money’s-worth. By the time we reached the 17th tee, Peter was visibly suffering from pain in his arthritic ankles and this appeared to act a stimulant to him to get the round over asap as he proceeded to score 3 points on each of the last 2 holes and thereby they completed the back 9 with 21 points.
MikeS appeared for lunch bringing with him the magnificent Ice Bucket which was first competed for in 2000 and, by-and-large, has been Ashley’s personal fiefdom since. RobM was then surprised to discover that he, along with MikeS and Ashley, had won the Ice Bucket last year and that it seemed that Mike had had it on display for the whole year.
However Rob can now display it for the next 6 months as it transpired that he and PeterR with 41 points had comfortably won the trophy since the other 3 teams had all managed to score a meagre 32 points each.
Nick had played some excellent shots to the two Par 3 holes which we had used for the NPin2 competition but had been beaten by firstly RobM on the 8th and then PeterR on the 13th almost giving them a clean sweep of all of the prizes (plus all of the BashCoins), except that I managed to pip them for the NPin2 on the 18th.
The discussion in the clubhouse inevitably turned to the upcoming list of medical procedures to be undergone by the Ballbashers present – we wish good luck to Ashley with his finger-joint replacement next week, PeteF with is ablation the following week and MikeS with his knee replacement the week after. We will have so much to chat about in 4 weeks time!!
