Or – What a difference a few days make.
On Monday, playing with the JFGS at Temple, Stuart scored 39 points and Roger scored 36. Two days later, playing with the Ballbashers at Temple, Stuart scored 25 and Roger scored 24. As they plunged downwards, halfway they met, not a barrel of bricks heading upwards as in the immortal words of Gerard Hoffnung, but me, who last week scored 14 points at Harleyford and was now on my way to a score of 41 at Temple – a complete reversal of score as well as of form.
What a truly strange game it is where it is possible to go from the sublime to the ridiculous and vice versa in the space of a few days. You would never imagine being afflicted with these enormous swings of form when playing tiddlywinks for example – why therefore should it afflict us golfers who are, after all, trying to get the ball into a much larger cup than we would be in a game of tiddlywinks? Answers on a very small postcard please.
It was yet another very benign winter’s day on which to play golf and the balls fell so that the first group comprising Stuart + Rob and me + JohnT set off first, closely followed by Mike + Nick and Roger + Bill.
Whereas on Monday I had thinned my approach wedge straight into the right-hand bunker, today I left it more-or-less stone dead and emerged with a birdie for 4 points. So amazed by this turn of events was I that I initially put myself down for a par, but a discussion on the next tee set me right. In the meantime, Rob who, from a very good position on the fairway, had scuffed his approach shot into the long grass on the edge of the bunker, rocketed a little chip in the general direction of Oxfordshire only to see it strike the flag plumb centre and fall into the hole for 4 points as well. As I think he pointed out at the time, the scorecard only shows the score and not the manner of achieving it. And so was battle joined.
After 4 holes we had 12 points to their 10 and despite Rob adding another 4-pointer on the 8th – this time it was n’t a fluke – we reached the turn with 23 points to their 20. Up to this point, it did n’t seem to much matter which part of the golf club I hit the ball with, it still flew straight but I spent a lot of the back 9 expecting one wheel or another to fall off and, while that did n’t happen, I was n’t reaching quite the same heights which allowed them to go into the lead.
But only for a couple of holes. Finally when JohnT’s great 3-pointer on the 18th matched theirs we had 20 points to their 18.
The denouement then revealed that Mike and Nick had also scored 20 points on the back 9 which meant that JohnT and I did not take all the BashCoins which was a tad disappointing and directly attributable to my 3 putts on the 17th but, hey-ho, you can’t win them all.
Team scores were JohnT and me 23 + 20 = 43, Mike and Nick 19 + 20 = 39, Stuart and Rob 20 + 18 = 38, Roger and Bill 18 + 14 = 32.
The individual league results were: Richard (41), RobA (36), Mike and Nick (31), Bill (27), JohnT (26), Stuart (25), Roger (24).
It was good to eat once again in the clubhouse where Nick was able to enjoy an early Xmas Lunch, aka the Temple Special, of Potato Skins, Bacon and Toasted Cheese topping following by lashings of Mince Pies. Pete joined us for lunch and in his slightly long-forgotten role of DisHon Sec Technology, he was able to introduce to us a gadget of great future interest to Ballbashers – a matchbox sized ECG monitor – if he could link it to the WHS system we would be home and hosed.
