Tuesday, 10 November 2020

Winter League Rd 1 (Douglas Disappoints)

This weekend marked the opening round of the Stonehaven Golf Club winter league competition, an annual event with battle joined for two trophies; singles and doubles.

For my part, I have the misfortune this season to be partnering Keith Douglas for the doubles, an individual who is to the concept of reliability what I am to the world of haute cuisine; absolutely useless. And to demonstrate his utter ineptitude at being a winter league partner, he started this year’s campaign by lying prostrate in his scratcher instead of alighting at the first tee, reprehensible behaviour but not unexpected from a goon I spent our last winter campaign carrying all around the golf course. 

But on to matters in hand. Without tying you up in knots regards the intricacies of the competition’s rulebook, the idea in essence is that both team members play each hole and the team score contribution is made by the player scoring lowest. For example, if I play the first hole and score a birdie 3 while Douglas hacks his way to a bogey 5, it is my exemplary birdie that counts towards the team total rather than his ugly bogey (and I use this as an example since it’s far from untypical). The competition is therefore made much harder if only one of the competing duo attends, nevertheless, I manfully carried the weight of the team entirely upon my own shoulders while he went AWOL. 

But further disappointment was to follow. After single handedly mastering Stonehaven GC with a near flawless 14 holes of golf, my playing partners for the day decided enough was enough and steadfastly refused to play the final four holes, preferring a quick exit from the late afternoon gloom rather than an extension to the golfing lesson which I was furnishing them with free gratis. As a result, my excellent performance was rendered futile, since I couldn’t complete the round, and my course record threatening total was instead converted to an apologetic NR (no return). 

It would be rude to name the two brothers who betrayed me in such a disgraceful manner so I’ll just provide their surname; Martin. On second thoughts, that might give their identities away, so instead I’ll give you their first names; Angus and Craig. It’s my hope that they’re able to sleep at night and that Santa wasn’t watching if they’re expecting him to slide down their respective chimneys this Christmas.

This coming weekend represents round 2 of the winter league and I can only hope that a) my partner has the common decency to at least turn up and b) our fourball affords us the courtesy of completing a full round of golf. Why do I have the feeling it’s going to be a long winter?

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