After a long absence we returned to Winter Hill today courtesy of MikeS’s membership, which gave us all a round for £25 each. We found the course in excellent condition – the fairways were well mown and almost entirely bereft of any mud, the sand in the bunkers was so much better than Temple’s, being consistent and of a depth which enabled a proper bunker shot, and the greens, while not so smooth and faultless as Temple’s were good enough. You then add in the great views of Autumnal trees all the way to Cliveden, the absence of traffic noise and the excellent food, of which more later, and you have a great place for Ballbashing and the chaos that can bring to a well-managed setup.
The five of us were playing an Autumn League match and the balls fell so that MikeS and Alan were partners and they were followed by MikeW, Bill and myself playing off the normal 3-person handicap of 3/4 + 1.
The champagne shot of the day has to be Bill’s wedge onto the green at the Par 3 200 Yrd 3rd hole where he put his drive out to the right in the lush rough about 40 yards from the hole with a very large bunker yawning between him and the pin. He struck the perfect wedge which landed a couple of feet beyond the bunker and rolled about 7 feet past the pin. A fairy-tale ending would have had him roll the putt in for a 4-pointer but he had to settle for a mere 3 points. Given he was operating under a grey cloud of despondency following teh events over the side of the pond, it was a sterling effort and a golden piece of Ballbashing.
On the other hand, our ability to cause chaos wherever we go was impeccably demonstrated by MikeS and Alan. Experienced Winter Hill golfers will recall that the 5th and the 12th run parallel to each other downhill with each having a slight dog-leg top the left. We were following MikeS and Alan and when we arrived at the 5th tee, we were quite surprised to find that they had disappeared. It was while we were driving off that we spotted them someway down the 12th fairway. They had been so engrossed in their chattering that, despite the fact that Mike has been a member for the best part of 30 years, they had gone off the wrong tee.
We three had driven off quite well so Bill sped off in his buggy to catch them up on the 12th green and point out their mistake. They then started plodding disconsolately back up the 5th fairway when we suggested that they could actually play the 5th hole next time round rather than the 12th and, we being gentlemen, would permit them this deviation. In the immortal words of Victor Borge and Eric Morecambe, they would be playing all the right holes but not in the right sequence.
This was a good strategy in theory but when they reached this point on the back 9, they had to cut in front of the 4-ball standing on the 5th tee and in the process, they had to explain themselves which the 4-ball took in good stead but unfortunately the delay this caused enabled 2 more groups to catch up with the waiting 4-ball on the 5th tee and distinct rumblings of discontent were heard as we passed by on our way to the 12th tee. We of course denied any knowledge of this apparently incompetent 2-ball who had caused the chaos.
For our part, we thought that we were playing off the yellow tees and did not notice until the 13th tee that no such thing as a yellow tee existed and we had been using the Stroke Indices from the White tees for our scoring. Winter Hill have now got black, white and gold tees and it was the gold tees that we were lining up with. This immediately explained why we could never square the numbers on the beautiful new wooden tee-markers with what we were reading on the scorecard. Incompetent management we muttered. On the 13th tee we realised that there was a clearly marked group of columns on the right-hand side of the scorecard all beautifully shaded gold and with a completely different set of Stroke Indices which tallied perfectly with the lovely wooden posts. One does have increasing worries about the mental state of the Ballbashers!
When we caught up with Mike S and Alan on the 17th tee, we sheepishly explained our mistake of incorrect scoring and expecting much derision despite their confusing the 5th and 12th holes, we happily found that they had made exactly the same mistake so we jointly agreed to carry on regardless using the wrong indices. It would not go down well in the hallowed halls of Wentworth or Sunningdale but it’s fine in the somewhat coarser world of Ballbasher golf.
Once into the clubhouse we relaxed into the environment and greatly enjoyed the food on offer. Being a gourmand 1st rate, Alan had chosen the epicurean dish known as Dirty Fries. I think that Bill’s hearing aids were still tuned to Radio Washington DC because it took Alan at least 3 attempts to communicate to Bill the complex recipe behind his dish- namely chips topped with chilli, topped with melted cheese topped with fried onion bits. We mostly gave up listening when Bill tried to communicate to Alan the contents of his Chicken Caesar Wrap – I suspect that Alan’s hearing aids were tuned to Radio Arsenal.
The team scores were as always quite close, though our team’s score was slightly dented by the inability of my partners to get their balls airborne in the front 9 – they are obviously frightened of the Autumnal mists. But one should not be churlish, we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
MikeS & Alan: 20 + 20 = 40
Bill, MikeW & Richard 17 + 21 = 38
As far as the Autumn League was concerned, there was a somewhat wider span:
Richard (37), MikeS (34), Alan (30), MikeW (28) and Bill (18)
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