The final Eclectic League game saw the two main contenders, MikeS and Nick, turn up at Huntswood for the showdown. Already on 54 points, surely nobody could catch Mike. Nick was on 49 points and then the next nearest was JohnT on 41. Stuart, Pete and me were so far behind as to be totally irrelevant.
The balls fell so that Mike and Nick were in the same 3-ball and after some debate on the merits of this, we all agreed that it would be much more fun if they could stare each other in the eyes in the style of DeChambeau and Koepka.
Everyone arrived well–briefed on what and where they had to score to win the League. I had a simple target of scoring 6 birdies and 6 pars. So I was well pleased when I birdied the 1st but my hopes were completely kiboshed when I scored a blob on the 2nd and lost my ball on the 3rd.
In the meantime Stuart was busy calibrating his radar in preparation for the Ryder Cup – if the Eclectic League was awarded to the player most often going out of bounds he would be a clear winner. JohnT was taking advantage of the conditions to run his ball along the ground sufficiently well to add 5 points to his total and finish the League in a very commendable 3rd position, admittedly over 10 points behind the front runners.
In the battle ahead of us, Mike made the first move with a 3-pointer on the 6th SI 2 to improve his total to 55 points but Nick responded immediately on the 8th SI 18 with a 3-pointer of his own to move to 50 points – surely Mike was still to far ahead to catch?
But, totally undeterred by the challenge, Player A appeared on the 13th SI 9 to add 1 to Nick’s score and then followed that with a 4 for 4 points replacing a 1-pointer to move to 54 points and Mike was now under serious pressure. Nick “just had to ” birdie 2 of the 3 remaining holes to win – the sort of scoring that Player A delights in. However it was not to be and Mike held on to win by a very short head.
The rest of us were too far behind to even rate a mention. I was suffering from over-strong putting and only managed to cure this by adopting Stuart’s right over left hand position – don’t be surprised to see this in the future.
It was a beautiful day to play golf on and while Huntswood is short, it is extremely tight in places and accuracy of tee shot placement is paramount – the sort of shot that that Ballbashers cannot always deploy!
