To be honest there are many possible titles for this week’s blog. “After the Lord Mayor’s Show” also springs to mind. Whatever is chosen, they all point to one thing and that is the amazing variation from week to week in golfing form. Often it is just one player who suffers alone but, at least this time, more-or-less the whole group was afflicted.
We could not blame the weather which was so good for golf that we were able to ignore one of our member’s images of himself on the 1st tee in South Africa dressed in shorts enjoying the late summer.
I, for one, started off quite well with a successful piece of course management out of the trees on the 1st enabling a par, followed by 5 for 2 on the long 2nd and a par on the 3rd. I was playing with Pete, accompanied by an opposition pair of Roger and Bill. I could blame Bill for then putting the mockers on my round by suggesting, as we stood on the 4th tee, that he was now going to enjoy an 18 hole masterclass from me but it was me, and not Bill, who was wielding my clubs.
Whatever the cause, the wheels started to fall off in a steady fashion with a blob on the 6th, which is possibly the easiest hole on the course, entirely due to a lack of sensible course management when in the trees on the right just an example of what was to come. The other 3 were not doing brilliantly on the front 9 either and Bill’s round was becoming a mixture of 3-pointers and blobs which is slightly more encouraging than a steady stream of 1s and 2s. Pete’s radar needed a serious overhaul and Roger was joining me in a stream of mediocrity. Roger’s putting was working quite well which, with him just having had a putting lesson, gave him some cause for satisfaction.
My good start at least resulted in Pete and I beating Roger and Bill by 18 to 16 on the front 9, but we knew that 18 was never going to be good enough to result in a positive outcome on the BashCoin front. Sadly the back 9 continued in like manner and I struggle to think of any highlights which must be unfair to Bill because he did score five 3-pointers to help accrue a respectable 16 points for him and his team. The closeness of the battle gave us some fun and, after they had taken an early lead on the back 9, Pete and I were able to claw that back and lead on the 18th tee by one point.
After we had dealt with the temporary green on the 18th which was situated on a 1 in 3 hill, the lead was unchanged and we won by 17 to 16 – again an insufficient total.
Elsewhere on the course Nick was partnered with Rob, who, absolutely surprisingly, had over-exerted himself on the front 9 and torn something in his right leg and thereby retired. They were partnered with Robert and MikeS, the latter of whom managed to post the only individual score over 30 points which coupled with Robert’s 29 (scored despite his savage handicap cut of 4 shots after last week) and some good meshing gave them total victory with 21 + 20 points = 41 which easily beat Pete and my 35 and Roger/Bill’s 32 and Nick/Rob’s 15 on the front 9.
Mike won the league game with 32 followed by everyone else in the 20s – Robert and me (29), Bill (27), Pete (25, Nick (24), Roger (23) and Rob (rtd).
The apres-golf lunch in the clubhouse covered hacking, nasty emails, phone security, big companies spying on us, online banking mishaps and all of the other pleasantries of modern life which really lifted our spirits after a discouraging day on the fairways. Hey ho – there’s always next week.
