Transition?

Well for the first time this year we played in sunshine with only a little breeze reminding us that the sun does exist despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. It is only the end of February so I think it would premature to think that we are entering Spring. The course continues to have a lot of mud in areas and it is now of the consistency that grips the wheels of your trolley so well that it cannot be blown off which reminds that I will have to get the hose out this weekend.

The impact of the shirt-sleeves conditions on the golf unfortunately cannot be described as positive – perhaps we have got too used to battling through freezing breezes – the winner on the day was the hibernator who sensibly had not got his clubs out since last December but the scores were not high.

We were playing a Frostbite League game with the normal batter-ball pairs team competition running alongside. The balls fell so that MikeS was paired with PeterR and MikeW with RobertM making up the first 4-ball followed by Alan & Bill playing with Roger & myself.

Right from the start it was clear to me that I was not in for a good day – after a topped drive which did not do too badly despite it’s ugliness, a pulled 7-wood and the chip that followed dumped straight into the bunker followed by putts hit far too hard, I left with a blob and a sense of foreboding descended on me. Roger was the only player in our group to score a point.

Bill was having a particularly difficult time – by the time we stood on the 6th he had accrued a single point. He boosted his score with 3 points on both the 6th and the 8th to get to 8 overall on the front 9 but he was muttering about transition. This seemed to be something that both he and his partner Alan were focussed on and I never did discover what he was talking about – was this climatic transition, gender transition (we can only hope not), political transition (well the Greens did win in Gorton) or something to do with his golf swing. If it was the latter then I don’t think he solved the problem, although moving from scoring 5 blobs on the front 9 to just 2 on the back could be seen as progress I suppose.

Bill was not alone in his struggles with this infuriating game, none of us four covered themselves with anything resembling glory over the back 9 and while the front 9 better-ball team scores of 18 to us and 15 to them were not great, the back 9 finished 13 each which for 2-ball better ball is just awful.

We retired to the clubhouse where we were joined by RobA. By then I was too knackered to take on-board anything we talked about but it was jolly good fun. When I got home I collapsed on a sofa and went to sleep for a couple of hours in an effort to forget the game.

The person who did best on the day was PeterR who had not played for 10 weeks – he scored 19 points on the front 9 on his way to 32. MikeW also did well with 31 but the rest of us were on 28 and under. Peter’s performance enabled him and MikeS to share 20 of the BashCoins on offer with MikeW and Rob taking the other 4.

Team scores:
MikeS & PeterR 21 + 17 = 38
MikeW & RobM 16 + 17 = 33
Richard & Roger 18 + 13 = 31
Alan & Bill 15 + 13 = 28

Individual scores:
PeterR (32), MikeW (31), MikeS & Richard (28), Alan (24), RobM (20) and Bill & Roger (18).

Next week we will be playing the 3 clubs + putter format which may improve matters with less fussing about which club to select and subsequently deciding you had chosen the wrong one.