Tales Of The Unexpected

I went out and practised tonight for the first time in well over a month, and after an initial spell of hitting the ball all over the place, when I realised that slowing my swing down may help, it got back to being semi-respectable. Seeing as it’s a fairly quiet week, I thought I’d catch up with some random and unusual incidents that have happened over the course of this season, that haven’t merited coverage in this blog;

- At Montrose I played with someone who played the first 9 holes in 1 over par, and the last 9 holes in 22 over par. I don’t think I’ve ever played with anyone who had such a drastic reversal in fortunes in the space of the same round.

- Also at Montrose, my other playing partner completed his two rounds in scores of 88 and 90, but each of those two rounds contained an eagle, at the par 5 6^th on day one, and the par 5 15^th on day two. I beat him by 21 shots but didn’t get a sniff of an eagle during the 2 days.

- A couple of weeks ago I went and played a round at a friend’s 9 hole course, and scored 9 consecutive pars. I’ve often talked about my goal of playing a round of golf without dropping a shot, but I think I’d be stretching it a bit to count a 9 hole course as achieving my target.

- At the Royal Montrose Open, I did mention that I got a 2 at the 235 yard 16^th hole. What I didn’t mention was that there was a magic 2’s competition, and with the extreme wind and difficulty of the pin positions on the 3 par 3s I was looking at a payout of between £50 - £100. Imagine my surprise when I got back to the clubhouse to discover that the ‘reward’ for getting a 2 was 3 Srixon balls, of the variety that I will never use, not even for practice. It must have been a very good money-making exercise for the golf club, bring in £150 in entry fees, and pay out 6 or 9 golf balls. It left a bit of a bad taste, seeing as magic 2s competitions are normally not for profit, it is generally the sum of the entries divided by the number of 2s, however it did give my friends the opportunity to make fun of me for weeks afterwards, comparing the measly reward I got compared with the fact I sweated blood to get that 2.

- During the Club Championship, someone managed to get an albatross 2 on the par 5 11^th. I have never played in a competition where an albatross was achieved, the player seemed fairly non-plussed by it afterwards, even though it was a 1,000,000/1 shot.

- Yet another one from Montrose; I religiously carry my golf clubs, avoiding push trolleys, power trolleys or carts wherever possible. When I got to the 7^th green at Montrose I picked my bag up and the strap completely snapped. The problem was that Montrose is very much an out-and-back course, with the furthest point from civilization being, yep, the 7^th green. A quick check of Google Earth shows that I was 1,995 yards from the nearest place where I could do anything about it. So I was left with a very uncomfortable carry for the rest of the round.

A lesson on Saturday and a competition round on Sunday will bring to an end one of the quietest weeks I’ve had for a couple of months.