Ten Ballbashers turned out to play the latest Autumn League game at Temple on a cool but very acceptable day. Given the difficulty that most Ballbashers have in remembering the precise nature of the golf ball that they have handed me to throw up in the air to choose teams based on the proximity of their balls, I had decided to use the technique pioneered on the Ryder Cup Tour of asking each player to pick a Lego brick out of a black bag – the bricks are coloured red, white and blue and thereby players end up in the red, white or blue team. I do not know if playing Lego with recently acquired grandchildren has created an easy familiarity with the bricks but it does seem to be the case that, apart from colour-blind members, everyone finds it easy to recall the colour of their brick and team. This has eased the stress on the 1st tee by some considerable margin.
All of that has apparently nothing to do with the main subject of my article but, not so, because I was drawn in the Blue Team which happened to be the last team going off. This gave me the opportunity to study players’ follow-throughs on the 1st tee. As in all of life, it does n’t matter how good your play-before is, if your follow-through is non-existent or skew-whiff.
It might be a touch of chicken and egg but, if you see a Ballbasher holding an exaggeratedly posed follow-though stance after his drive, you can be sure that his ball has flown straight down the middle e.g. MikeS on the 1st tee yesterday. This allows time for the astonished gasps of admiration of the assembled to resonate fully round the course. If on the other hand, there is no apparent follow-through and the player is looking towards the heavens in disgust, you can be sure that the ball has flown into the trees to the right or left of the fairway.
I had the pleasure of playing in the same group as Alan. When we started off, his languidity had reached such a peak that it was difficult to discern any movement of the driver head at all and the end result was that the ball was heading off to the right. He eventually adjusted the languidity control to allow a very definite follow-through with very positive and slightly annoying results (he was in an opposing team). He put his drive on the 8th straight onto the green and sank the putt for 5 points. Given that his partner JohnH, who has no shortage of follow-through, had scored 4 for 4 on the previous hole, Roger and I were not amused.
So it became quite clear to me that after the most important habit of looking at the ball you are trying to hit, the next most important thing is to imagine the beauty of the follow-through you are going to display to the world – that way lies certain victory.
The denouement over the normal excellent Temple lunch revealed the following team scores:
MikeS/MikeW/PeteF 21 + 20 = 41
Alan & JohnH 22 + 19 = 41
Richard & Roger 18 + 19 = 37
Nick/Bill/RobA 17 + 14 = 31
The latter 3-ball were concerned about the handicap calculation they were forced to play under as a 3-ball but since the other 3-ball shared the spoils of victory, it was difficult for them to argue a convincing case.
The league results were:
Richard (34), Alan (33), MikeW (32), MikeS and JohnH (31), Pete (30), Nick (28), RobA (27), Bill (26) and Roger who was hampered by a nasty spasm in his leg (21).
