Many a happy moment was spent today at Huntswood searching for golf balls, not always successfully, under the wonderful carpet of golden leaves. Unsurprisingly the glories of our natural world are not hugely popular with the average Ballbasher, especially if he has made the mistake of playing with a yellow ball. But we have to acknowledge that after 3 or 4 holes of drizzle, it became a beautiful autumnal day on which to play golf.
After much muttering and re-throwing of golf balls to cope with the uncertain number of golfers, we were formed into groups and set off.
I was partnered with Nick and Alan and they were curious to see if I could sustain the deep purple patch that I enjoyed last week at Temple. Given that that was 7 days ago and therefore a lifetime in matters of golfing form, I always felt that the answer was going to be bl…..g obvious and so it proved as I gradually drifted towards a dingy pink patch over the round. It’s like so many things in life, enjoy it while you can (can what is up to you).
Nick was battling with Player B who had decided to inhabit his body for a lot of today. Player A has clearly gone on a cruise somewhere warm. Nick had decided that the problem lay 100% in his inability to look at the ball while he was trying to hit it. His pre-shot routine thereby consisted of several violent swishes of the club accompanied by synchronised outbursts of “keep your head down”. Given the violence of the practice swish, both Alan and I felt it prudent to follow the advice and duck. We were thereby unable to focus on where Nick’s ball had gone – generally speaking, that did n’t present too much of a problem as it had n’t gone very far but occasionally the ball departed the tee like a rocket and it would then take us some time to find the correct heap of leaves.
Travelling slowly was not too much of a problem since were continuously held up by a group in front who seemed to spend most of the round doing a freestyle line-dance up and down the fairway while we watched from the tee. We did encounter a few unpleasant golfers on our way round – one group of whom was particularly sarcastic/unpleasant when Nick had to play a shot off the edge of their fairway – surely that is where most people play their golf from.
Alan reckons that he takes 3 or 4 holes to warm up normally so Nick and I were particularly pleased when he scored a 3 for 3 points on the second hole, imagining as we were that his warmup had been a tad quicker than normal. That thought process proved to be ill-founded and it proved difficult to discern when his warm-up had been completed. However we managed to get to the halfway point with a team score of 21 points.
Behind us the 2 x 2-balls had decided, that since RobA had not arrived, they would coalesce into one 4-ball. We only occasionally encountered them and that was generally because they were looking for a stray golf ball under leaves near us.
Bill turned up to play the back 9 holes and he joined us. That enabled him and Nick to have deep discussions about the best record ever recorded and the house in which it was recorded and even the colour of the loo paper. We were now being severely held up, so these conversations, in which Alan and I felt ill-equipped to participate were able to roam widely over the Tamla Motown scene, taking in Phil Spector on the way.
Eventually we arrived back in the clubhouse, too late for lunch and almost too late for a nightcap. The scores showed the normal very close and complex set of ties. Thank goodness we did not approve PeteF’s suggestion that we reverted to using £pound coins – we would have needed a hacksaw to divide up the spoils. Whereas in the virtual world of BashCoins we can let the computer do the work!
AR, NT and RC scored 21 + 18 = 39 thereby winning the front 9 and tying overall with:
MS and MW who scored 20 + 19 = 39 to tie the overall but we were all beaten on the back 9 by
RM and JS who scored 16 + 22 = 38.
The individual scores for the Autumn League reflected the windy leaf-strewn conditions:
MikeS and Richard (32), Rob M (28), MikeW and Alan (27), Nick (25) and JohnS (23).
