Impossible to imagine but a new medical condition entered the Ballbashers’ lexicon today – of that more anon. Following the withdrawal of PeterR due to Covid and of MikeS due to the currently circulating heavy cold which seems to be a very close cousin of Covid, it was left to just MikeW, RobM and me to contest the final game of the Autumn League series. It was such a nice day for golf, I hardly had the heart to tell them that I already won the League before we set foot on the 1st tee.
When I arrived I cam across an untypically early Rob practicing on the putting green. He explained that he was trying to sort out the problem he had had the week before whereby he was missing every short putt going. He had worked out through, I am sure, careful statistical analysis that if he swapped his hands around on the putter shaft so that right was below left rather than vice versa which he retained for the longer putts, that he sunk short putts with gay abandon. He was fortunate that we were not all born with 3 arms because the combinations would be endless and possibly defeat even Rob’s razor-sharp attention to scientific detail in matters of golf.
MikeW duly arrived and we set off down the hill to the 1st tee, at which point Rob revealed that, on getting out of his car in Temple car park, he had experienced a sudden pain in his right buttock. Having established that there were no cane-happy public schoolboys in the vicinity he decided on the somewhat unlikely explanation that he must have tweaked a muscle in said element of his body. He quite sensibly denied all offers of a helpful massage from they and settled for playing with a new condition entitled Tight Buttock Syndrome or TBS for short.
Rob’s first drive in the trees on the right-hand side suggested that TBS had not caused any real change to his golfing outcomes, but his second shot, which was sent magnificently straight at the pin to come to rest about 5 feet past, gave Mike and myself cause to think that buttock-clenching may be the solution to a whole range of golfing ills.
Rob carried on playing the best golf we have seen from him for many a month and ended up with a very solid 16 + 16 points. For my part I found it difficult to add yet another dimension to the list I was thinking about before every shot. Whether I put buttock-clenching ahead or behind of the existing set of keep-your-eye-on-the-ball, take-the-club-straight-back and follow-through, I soon realised that I could only cope with 3 dimensions and never with 4 so I stuck with my existing set.
Despite the enormous benefit that TBS and the resultant buttock-clench bestowed on Rob’s driving and fairway shots, it soon became apparent that it was not doing anything for his close-range putting. Swapping hands around on the putter shaft when you can’t decide whether the putt you are facing is short or long does nothing for the result – I can confidently predict that RobM will soon be making RobA an offer that he can’t refuse for the super new putter he acquired after the BB AGM.
It’s quite possible that missing short putts is as contagious as Covid because by the time we got to the 18th green I was missing another putt from about 90cm – just outside the Ballbasher standard gimme of 86.5cm (or is 68.5?) – anyway we all putted so badly on the 18th that we fell about hysterically laughing and retired to the clubhouse where we were joined for a convivial lunch by Ashley and JohnT.
The scores on the day were:
Richard 19 + 17 = 36
RobM 16 + 16 = 32
MikeW 17 + 13 = 30
And so we say farewell to 2023 and hello to Happy Ballbashing in 2024.
Merry Christmas One and All
I have to report that both my putting prowess and TBS have now completely disappeared, which is a shame as I understand that some ladies find TBS rather alluring. In a man.