Speeding round at Temple

Apparently the official world record for the fastest 18 holes of golf is 36 mins and 6 seconds. This was set by a British Pro Golfer called Luke Willett over a 6312 yard course and was all officially recorded by the International Speed-Golf Association (ISGA). He also holds the record for 9 holes at 20 minutes and 12 seconds. He does all this with just one club but I haven’t been able to find out which club he uses. Perhaps we should try a 1-club only round of golf and see how close we can get to 36 minutes.

Heaven forbid that the Ballbashers ever find themselves being measured by the ISGA because I don’t expect that they come equipped with big enough egg timers but, in response to the latest 5 hour round at Winter Hill and last week’s 4½ hours at Temple, we mutually decided to try and travel a bit quicker today. In this we were helped by 3 members being in buggies and other 2 hapless players being on foot. It was also a bit chilly which kept us moving

The balls fell so that MikeS and MikeW(buggy) were in one team and PeterR & RobA (sharing a buggy) plus myself were the other team. Despite the dismal forecast it was not raining at our appointed tee-off time so we set off with us 3 winning the toss and starting first. We all hit all drives down the right-hand side and they came to rest within 20 yards of each other .

The buggy riders went at full pelt down the hill and I felt obliged to do some speed-walking to try and keep up. This set the tone for the rest of the round. At times I felt that Peter and Rob resembled Freddie Flintstone is his car with his little feet going like the clappers under the car though in actual fact it was my little feet that were going like the clappers.

My goal today was to cut out, or more realistically, reduce the number of 3-putts that I had on the greens from last week’s 10 or so. I was helped in this plan by the greens being top-dressed so they were a tad slower plus a large puddle on the 13th green trapped my tee-shot which, being an overhit 7-wood, was destined for the A404 before it encountered the puddle and I have no idea how many putts I would have taken coming back from the central reservation. On the 5th green I took 4 putts which at least still hit my target of not taking 3. So one way or another I hit my goal with only three 3-putts – this also helps to speed up the round.

PeterR got off to a cracking start and racked up a solid 19 points on the front 9 to which Rob and I added a few more to give us 21 as a team playing off the normal reduced 3-ball team handicaps. I actually felt this might be enough to win but I was disappointed to find it wasn’t. We had met MikeW on the 7th fairway when he was supposed to be on the 6th and were encouraged to learn that he had scored 3 points in the first 5 holes and be in 5 bunkers and behind 3 trees. Little did we know that he then contrived to score 4 points on that hole and again on the 7th followed by 3 points on the 8th thereby spoiling our party.

Despite the hypersonic speed at which we were travelling, we still had time for some rapid-fire conversation musing at one time on how similar it must now be in the Vatican compared to Conclave and wondering if they might elect a new guy who is not only the standard cross-dresser but who also owns a mixed-up set of physical attributes – something that we will never find out unfortunately.

Arriving back in the clubhouse in a time of 3½ hours we found Stuart and PeteF already there. The former was in good form despite the encumbrance on his left foot. Pete is now 3 weeks away from his knee replacement so he is very interested in more details on what had befallen the various titanium knee-owners round the table. That still left time to talk about more jolly things such as Peter’s upcoming trip to Sussex in his ancient Bentley – apparently they all have bodies built by different body-builders so if we could stop them looking under the bonnet we might be able to go along in whatever we have and claim it was built by some odd chap in Sunderland on a Bentley chassis.

Team scores:
MikeS & MikeW 21 + 20 = 41
PeterR, RobA & Richard 21 + 18 = 39

League scores:
Richard (34), MikeS & PeterR (32), MikeW (28) and RobA (24)