That was indeed the question yesterday at Temple where we gathered to play the first Novelty game since Alan took charge of these formats. The rules were simple – each player had 6 mulligans per 9 holes and if you chose to play a mulligan that was the ball that you were then committed to regardless of where the first shot had gone to – this led to a somewhat warm debate on the 18th hole in our team of which more anon.
JohnT had turned out to play after many a month’s absence and he could not have chosen a better day in Autumn on which to play golf. The sun was shining, the trees everywhere full of magical golden and russet colours and the course immaculate as per normal. He and Bill decided to share a buggy, which with 6 of us playing in total, meant that one walker had to be selected to join them. The balls were thrown and Alan found himself with the buggy-riders while Mikes S and W plus me formed the other team.
I had thought about the format beforehand and arrived at a master-plan whereby I would use all of mulligans around and on the green in attempts to get the ball stone dead and thereby avoid those eminently miss-able 4 and 5 footers. Our team went off first and I played the first tee-shot. Unfortunately my tee-shot disappeared leftwards into the trees and I was forced to tear up my mulligan master-plan after only one shot and take another tee-shot which luckily went straight down the middle and resulted in 3 points on the 1st hole.
The new master-plan was instantly formed – I would take my remaining mulligans when my tee-shots disappeared into the trees. The second hole passed with out incident but on the 3rd hole I found my second shot in the bunker to the right of the green. Now the bunkers at Temple are not in good shape – the bottoms resemble pre-cast concrete so when my first wrist-jangling attempt to play out failed, I elected to use another mulligan and the ball did reach the edge of the green having rattled around inside the bunker like a ball inside a pinball machine in an arcade.
While executing this shot I narrowly avoided death when MikeS’ s approach shot thudded into the bunker beside me – I was fortunate in that he decided not to take a mulligan in that his aim may have improved. Anyway MikeW’s ball was already in the bunker beside mine and it was getting far too cosy for comfort.
So now I added bunker shots to my mulligan master-plan and completely forgot about my initial plan to use them on the greens. Thereby, by dint of not hitting a tee-shot into the trees or any shot into a bunker, I arrived at the 9th hole with 3 mulligans still to use. I managed to get my ball to about 5 feet from the hole in 3 normal shots and so decided to revert to the original master-plan and use all of my 3 remaining mulligans in attempts to sink the 5-footer for 3 points. Unfortunately my master-plan had not reckoned with the possibility that I might miss 3 times in a row from the same point and this is, of course, what occurred. And although my 1st attempt had finished about 6 inches from the hole, my 3rd attempt went about 3 feet past, leaving me with a knee-knocking putt from the opposite direction. Luckily for my sanity this one went in for 2 points.
Between the 3 of us, we had used 5 mulligans on the 9th hole and crept away with a total of 3 points. Earlier in the front 9, MikeS had used 2 mulligans en-route to the Par 5 4th green and failed to score anything. A feat which MikeW replicated on the 7th.
Elsewhere we had melded quite well and scored a few 6 and 7-pointers which proved to be just as well. This was something we failed to achieve on the back 9 with predictable results. MikeW had developed a push -left tee-shot which on the back 9 results in multiple balls heading for the A404 and by the time we came off the 15th green he had used all of his 6 mulligans peppering the passing traffic. MikeS, however, had been guarding his to the extent that, just like I had on the 9th, he arrived on the 18th green in 2 shots with his ball about 45 feet from the hole and 3 mulligans remaining unused.
His first putt just skimmed the hole and finished about 3 feet past it. Mike was very inclined to stick with that putt and use his mulligans in attempts to get the ball into the hole in one more putt for a par. However MikeW and I were so encouraged by the accuracy of his first putt that we felt that he had to use his mulligans in attempts to sink his 40-footer for a birdie. MikeS was very grumpy about this plan but went with the team vote. It is possible that he was determined to prove us wrong because he left the next 3 attempts progressively further and further away from the hole and when he finally had to take the last one, he missed the hole and thereby failed to get the par – he was not very happy with his team-mates at this point, suggesting that when he wanted our helpful advice, he would ask for it.
We were joined at lunch by PeteF whom we had not seen for yonks and discovered that it is his right knee which is keeping him off golf – he must almost have the widest range of medical conditions in the Ballbashers – most of whom just have metal joints. Anyway he seemed to be in good spirits as was JohnT after his long absence battling hamstring issues.
The scores revealed a typically tight result:
MikeS, MikeW and Richard 48 + 39 = 87
Alan, Bill and JohnT 37 + 47 = 84
So that was one 9 holes each and the just the overall going to the 2 Mikes and me.
Alan then reminded us that, in his emails, he had referred to the fact that the winning individual could claim to be the Mulligan Master. While we had forgotten this element, we did however know that none of us had reached Alan’s magnificent score of 44 points and we duly crowned him as the Mulligan Master to go with his sundry other titles. Perhaps we should have some sort of hat with a purple feather which he has to wear henceforth when playing golf until he loses it next year, or maybe a sash?
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