Winter League - the reluctant resurrection

Back in 1991, my football team (Aston Villa) poached the then manager of Sheffield Wednesday, Ron Atkinson. It was just before the start of a new season and to suggest this event caused enmity between the two clubs would be an understatement. A couple of weeks later, when the fixtures came out for the new campaign, you just knew we’d get drawn away at Hillsborough on the first day and sure enough, that’s what happened. I was in the away end that afternoon  when Atkinson emerged from the tunnel to receive fearful pelters from a hostile home support, baying for his blood. As he walked along the touchline they decorated his suit and hair with spittle, and by the time he reached the dugout, his jacket was glistening like a starry nighttime sky.

Similarly, when it was announced last week by Keith Douglas that he was withdrawing from our winter league doubles partnership, I had a funny feeling I’d be crossing swords again soon with the gormless goon, and lo and behold, did it not come to pass this very next Sunday. Who should be waiting for me when I pitched up for my allotted start time of 10:20am? Yes you’ve guessed it. 

With tee times at a premium these days, given golfers are reduced to playing alone or in two-balls, Douglas had no choice but to place his name next to mine when arranging his weekend knock. Neither of us were over impressed with this turn of events, sizing each other up on the first tee with dismissive disregard. I’m not sure who was the more disgusted, him or me. Last week’s bitter shenanigans, whereby Douglas withdrew from our partnership, had left a bad taste between us, but we reluctantly agreed to deal with it like men, or in his words ‘jist get on wi’ it’. 

The conditions were freezing, but not as cold as the sub zero atmosphere as we alighted upon the first hole, (see the photo attached for an indication of the somewhat cool atmos). It had been a mere seven days since he’d pulled out of our winter league participation, yet we now found ourselves gurning across the fairways at each other once again. Without wishing to rake over old coals, he’d withdrawn from the event last week claiming my attitude to be insufferable, pretty rich coming from a duffer who....oh let’s not get into that all over again, it was dealt with last week. Suffice to say we commenced our eighteen holes this week daggers drawn, and ended it likewise. He wasn’t pleased when I told him we’d continue in the league despite his outburst of last week, but I explained I’d be sueing him for libel if he didn’t comply so he reluctantly, and gracelessly, agreed. 

Three hours of awkward silences later, we shuffled off the course with a respectable 65 in our back pockets, albeit barely having said two words to one another the whole way round. I’d attempted conversation when we reached the 8th fairway but he’d pretended not to hear, unless he genuinely couldn’t hear since he was concentrating on finding the result of his latest duck hook off the tee. He did manage to volunteer conversation on the 15th green, demanding an explanation for my missed putt, a demand I didn’t demean myself by answering, particularly since he’d just three stabbed his way to yet another bogey. He collects bogeys like some people collect stamps. 

It was champagne golf from my good self as I racked up the birdies (12th, 16th, 17th) while narrowly missing countless other attempts. I’m pleased to say I’ve successfully addressed my short game yips, those nervy jabs from just off the green that have your playing partners diving for cover as your rocket speed knifings threaten to fracture ankles. That said, there was a slight altercation with Douglas on the 13th when I elected to putt my ball onto the green from five yards away while he opined that  ‘proper golfers’ would chip it. Imagine my pleasure then when rolling said putt to the hole side for a tap-in while his chip shot, from virtually the same spot, ended several feet from the cup. Talk about letting your golf do the talking. I nonchalantly nudged my par putt into the hole before, wordlessly, vacating the green for him to attempt his. I don’t know whether he holed it or not, I couldn’t care less, our three was in the bag thanks to me and I had no time to hang around for his superfluous contribution. 

All in all 65 was a pretty good return, particularly given our days in the competition seemed over just a week ago. To be fair to the bearded wonder, he did negotiate a birdie on the 10th (the shortest par four on the course) although beyond that failing to come to the party with any serious effect, except for an unseemly stagger to a par on the last. Overall it was a paltry contribution from Douglas as he left his partner to pepper the communal scorecard with low numbers.  

Reports of our early exit from this year’s winter league doubles competition then are somewhat previous as we have, albeit kicking and screaming, agreed to fulfil our obligations after all. Having entered the league in good faith at the start of the season, we shall complete it and look forward to receiving our appearance money in due course. May it be placed on record, however, that it wasn’t I who flounced off last week to release a statement to the press announcing my withdrawal from the competition, it was Douglas. I’m proud that I had the good grace to continue our partnership, despite his intense provocation, and when we lift the trophy at the end of the season, it’ll be only right that it is I who delivers the winner’s speech. It couldn’t be Douglas anyway, the trophy would simply get lost in that preposterous foliage beneath his chin.

Winter League - final round

The world of golf was shaken this weekend by news that the Douglas/Russon partnership has pulled out of the Stonehaven Golf Club winter league, a bombshell few could have predicted. After a shaky start to the campaign, results had been improving, yet, in a terse statement from Douglas’s agent, the duo’s seemingly harmonious relationship has been brought to an abrupt end.

“My client, Keith Douglas, would like to announce his withdrawal from this season’s Winter League Doubles event at Stonehaven Golf Club. He’d like to thank the organisers for their efforts, the green keepers for their upkeep of the course and wish all remaining competitors well for the remainder of the season. With regard to Alex Russon however, he wishes nothing but a pox upon his house. Preferably sometime soon”.

The statement went on to describe the reasons for Douglas’s decision but cannot be printed here given its expletive ridden content. We have been able to establish however that the partnership suffered a significant breakdown following their latest competitive outing which found Douglas storming off the course in apoplectic rage. It appears Russon’s performance that day, and subsequent unrepentant attitude, proved the straw that broke the camel’s back after several weeks of unrest between the pair. The two had been firm friends since their schooldays in the eighties, however are now unlikely to cross the road to assist were the other to be on fire.

Seeking a deeper insight into the unsavoury matter, we contacted a recent playing partner of the feuding pair and, while not wanting to be quoted for fear of reprisals, he reluctantly spilled the beans on his experience. 

“ They were insufferable. I get why Douglas couldn’t stand another minute with that Russon character, I couldn’t either, but he’s no saint himself. The pair of them bickered the whole way round, dishing out pelters to each other and turning the air blue, it was torture. Douglas in particular had a potty mouth that wouldn’t be acceptable after the watershed, never mind before it. Good riddance to them both I say, and I believe I speak for the entire club”.

Matters are rumoured to have come to a head on the 14th hole during the duo’s recent, and ultimately final, round. It’s reported that Douglas’s shank onto Skatie Shore was met with howls of derision by Russon who then proceeded to nonchalantly flick his own ball to the hole side with a medium iron, an act which merely rubbed salt into Douglas’s wound. During the subsequent walk to the green, Douglas serenaded his partner with foul mouthed abuse rather than congratulation and Russon reacted with his fists. The pair were soon to be found scuffling in a green side bunker (one to which Douglas is well accustomed) and after Douglas had taken his hiding, he spent the remaining holes racing his remote controlled golf caddy at Russon’s person. As a result, it was with a hobble that both of them returned to the locker room, club stewards keeping them apart.

This parting of ways brings to a close a friendship lasting three decades, stretching back to 1986 when Russon won the junior championship (with Douglas languishing dozens of strokes behind in mid table obscurity). The intervening period found Douglas toiling endlessly to equal Russon’s mastery of Stonehaven Golf Club but, with that outcome doomed to eternal failure, he was reduced to an attempted maiming by golf cart instead. 

Russon was not available for comment following today’s statement. We contacted his management team who explained that their client was up at the golf club stiffing wedges from a hundred yards and nailing drives straight down the middle. 

Winter League Rd 8 - (lightning strikes twice)

I used to be an amateur footballer back in the day, not a very good one, but a footballer nonetheless. When my career drifted to a close I was to be found on the periphery of the squad, rarely getting a game unless someone had gone down with the effects of a bad curry. Occasionally, I’d pitch up to watch a game from the sidelines only to be asked if I had my boots in the car, perhaps Frankie would have a dose of the squits or some such. Well today’s golf outing reminded me of that experience, not that I replaced anyone who had the trots, just that I turned up expecting a casual bounce game but found myself thrust instead into the heat of winter league battle.

Unbeknown to me, the winter league weekend fixture had been extended to include Monday’s play so before I knew it I had a scorecard in my hand. I’d be flying solo in terms of submitting a ‘team’ score given my doubles partner was at work but I was joined by my good friend Brian Davie and two other winter leaguers; Steven Guzik and Chris Brown. Pleasantries were exchanged, opening drives executed and away we went on a bitterly cold day.

Sadly, we were playing on winter greens, a member of the committee deciding that the summer greens required a rest after a battering from the weather, an extremely disappointing turn of events. The art of putting is my favourite aspect of golf, the only facet I’m any good at to tell the truth, performing on conventional greens for me is therefore a must. Imagine my despondency then, to learn my enjoyment was to be ruined by the mean spirited actions of a committee member who’d decided (no doubt from the comfort of his armchair, bedecked in smoking jacket, reclining before a roaring fire and swirling cognac around a glass sat snugly in his right hand), that all must suffer simply because he reckoned the greens needed a breather. I’ve no desire to embarrass the individual in question, or indeed spearhead any kind of lynch mob, that would be most unsavoury, so let’s protect his identity by using just his surname; Wood. No, on second thoughts, I’d better use his first name in case his surname gives the game away; it’s Ian.

I hope this individual feels able to sleep tonight having ruined the sporting pleasure of upwards of a hundred willing golfers assembling themselves in anticipation of a pleasant round of golf, incorporating standard greens. It looked for all the world, to anyone with a functioning set of peepers anyway, that the summer greens were playable but oh no, Billy Bigtime swaggers into town to spoil everyone’s fun. It’s come to a pretty pass when committee members get a kick out of ruining the festive period for the paying members whom they’re supposed to serve. I bet he used to take his football home when he was a kid, leaving all his mates without anything to play with. That’s if he had any mates. Which I doubt. It takes a really mean spirited individual to torpedoe everyone else’s festive spirit by switching to winter greens on a treasured bank holiday Monday shortly after Christmas. Talk about bursting one’s bubble. I propose to write a tersely worded letter of complaint to the committee but will no doubt be met by a kangaroo court, replete with said individual’s cronies. So much for democracy. Pah.

But let’s not be bitter, that’s unbecoming, instead we’ll turn to the golf itself and in particular the exploits of Messrs Guzik and Brown who shot the lights out with a 62. An impressive total on the face of it yes, but don’t be fooled. You don’t always get the full story behind a scorecard do you? Well on this occasion I can offer you the benefit of a ringside seat, let me spill the beans.

There’s good luck and bad luck in sport isn’t there? For example, returning again to my hapless football career, I scored ten goals in my time as a robust centre back, five at the correct end and five into my own net. The goals I scored at the right end fulfilled the law of averages; if you turn up for enough corners in the opposition penalty area you’re bound to get the odd header bounce off you and beyond the keeper. My goals were more luck than design. Equally, when you’re a defender, you can’t help but suffer occasional bad luck as your attempts to repel crosses sent into your box are diverted past your own keeper’s nose, I was guilty of this on five occasions. How apt, my football career levelling out to nothing with five goals  notched at each end. 

Well, golf is similar. Chip the ball towards the hole a hundred times and the odd effort is bound to drop fortuitously into the cup, and today such an outcome came to pass for Steven Guzik, not only once but twice. With the aid of a golf mat (rules conveners yet to verify its legality), Steven delivered the ball into the hole, twice, from a distance of twenty yards or more, both times with shots that on another day would have skittled past the hole and off the green. With us playing on winter greens the grass was somewhat longer which slowed down the speed of the ball, and given the rain we’d had, his ball would land deftly upon the turf as if plopping into a suet pudding, barely progressing beyond its landing zone. It would be churlish to suggest his chip-ins on the 13th and 16th weren’t reasonably well executed but at the same time, the element of luck far outweighed the element of skill, if Steven wouldn’t mind me saying so. Regrettably, his reaction to both flukes did nothing to advance the game of golf as a gentleman’s sport, his immodesty in full glare. There’s a time and place for moon dancing and yelping out loud as if having won the lottery, a golf course is not it. It would appear the etiquette rulebook has yet to make an appearance at the Guzik residence since, in a vulgar display of braggadocio, his playing partners were subjected to behaviour belonging on the football terraces, thin air being punched as he strutted around the green as if parading on a catwalk. Perhaps if his playing partner, Chris, had bought him a dictionary for Christmas, Steven might have had the opportunity to look up the word ‘decorum’ and demonstrate its meaning rather than prancing around like a peacock on heat. 

Nevertheless, his birdie and eagle were significant accomplishments, contributing in no small measure to an impressive total of 62, a score which might yet aid their progression into the final. Steven’s partner, Chris, weighed in admirably too, his putting somewhat suspect but forgivable given Wood’s inexplicable decision earlier in the day to deny participants the use of standard greens. (One doesn’t like to harp on or bear grudges but I’m tempted to put a call in to a couple of mates I have in a backstreet Birmingham boozer, they know how to deal with individuals such as Wood and would be only too pleased to have an intimate conversation...with his kneecaps). But returning to Chris, he crashed the ball a healthy distance with what amounted to less than a half swing, he’d tonk it a country mile if he were to extend his swing arc to John Daly proportions. But if it ain’t broke don’t fix it they say, so I’d therefore advocate a continuation of the short backlift Chris and for that piece of advice there’ll be no charge, however I’d be obliged if you’d, ahem, take another look at the total at the bottom of my scorecard which you were kindly marking, if you catch my drift? 😉

I was on a good score until I faltered with a reprehensible seven on the 11th, a fine drive ruined by a return to short game yippery. I birdied the 16th but offered no fireworks beyond that, hobbling to a mediocre 75, not a total likely to trouble trophy engravers anytime soon. 

Next weekend I hope my partner in crime (Keith Douglas) can join me as we attempt to pull our winter league fortunes up by the bootstraps. Here’s hoping we do so upon summer greens otherwise the ARI can expect a visit on Monday morning from a Stonehaven Golf Club committee member who appears to be suffering from a prodigious limp. 

Winter League rd 7 (mind funk)

According to common maxim, 95% of a golfer’s fortunes depends upon that which is occurring between his or her ears during a round of golf. Provided a player possesses the basic fundamentals of a golf swing, the scorecard will, in large part, reflect the mindset deployed whilst that individual was on the course . This week’s winter league round 7 proved a perfect example of that axiom.

My doubles partner, Keith Douglas (the goon with the beard in this photo), is a good golfer. There I said it. He plays off a handicap of 3 and demonstrates an unruffled approach to golf which rarely finds him flirting with danger. He goes about his business diligently, with the minimum of fuss, collecting pars with gay abandon and only the occasional blemish sullies his card. However, and this is where the head funk reference comes in, put him on the 14th tee at Stonehaven Golf Club and the game’s a bogey, he turns into a quivering wreck. It’s bizarre. This otherwise highly competent, unflappable golfer who consistently breaks 70 at Stoney, becomes a hacker of the highest order for one hole only. I’ve seen him slice the ball onto Skatie Shore, sky it out of bounds, dump it into gorse and pull it into no man’s land. His tee shots off the 14th are as grotesque a sight as anything you’d see a beginner inflict upon your peepers and it happened yet again this week, his tee shot threatening the life of dog walkers on the beach below. It can only be attributable to a paralysis of analysis between the ears, that golfing mind funk which afflicts us all at one time or another.

Unfortunately, my occasional stinking thinking rears it’s ugly head also, and I chose the very same hole as Keith to demonstrate my brain fade, although gratifyingly with less disastrous results. It’s a team game, the best score on each hole counting towards the team scorecard, so when Douglas fluffed his lines with a monstrous hoik out of bounds, I needed to step up. The first part of the operation I negotiated with aplomb, a splendid tee shot coming to rest a mere fifteen feet from the hole. But, fatally, between tee and green, as I strode the short fairway in pensive and negative thought, I talked myself into a three putt. As soon as I stood on the green I couldn’t wait to get off it and instead of striking a confident, gutsy birdie attempt, I dollied a pitiful lag two feet short then proceeded to muff the tap-in, horseshoeing the damned thing around the hole and leaving it above ground. I thought I was going to vomit. Unforgivable golf, and all because my muscles had listened to what my weak mind had instructed them to do. Pathetic,lily livered, lamentable timidity. Stomping to the next tee, steam coming from my ears, I looked up for a word of consolation from my doubles partner, but there was none, just a dismissive shake of the head and a volley of abuse (from the man, I remind you, who didn’t even complete the hole given his abject fear of it).

Anyhow, despite our mutual farrago on fourteen, we managed to record a creditable 64 from eighteen holes of golf, representing our best effort yet in seven attempts. We’re a long way behind the front runners but it’s not over till its over and hope springs eternal etc, etc. Hold on, who am I trying to kid? We’re also rans this year and no mistake.

The company was good, Brian Hardstaff proving an even bigger wind up merchant than our good selves, ably matched in this regard by our other playing partner, Willie Donald. The cheek kept coming, as did the biting cold with the four of us manfully completing the round despite Baltic conditions, a light frost accompanying us throughout as we battled the elements beneath four layers of clothing. One of the benefits of winter league golf is playing with folk you might never ordinarily play with. It’s a joy chewing the fat with fellow members as you share three hours of golf in the prettiest of settings. That said, quite what people make of the Douglas/Russon combo is anyone’s guess. We’re not everyone’s cup of tea since we don’t take the game terribly seriously, so it’s rare for people to put their names alongside ours twice. We’re running out of people to mark our card. It’s a relief that new covid related club rules allow us to mark our own or we wouldn’t be completing this season’s winter league at all.

Winter League Rd 6 (a grown man cries)

There’s something rather discomforting about watching a grown man cry, it’s akin to witnessing the scolding of a child, you don’t quite know where to direct your eyes. The  modern era accepts the need for men to let their emotions show, and that’s a good thing, but nevertheless, it can be perplexing when you see a bloke ‘blarting’ (Birmingham word). 

I’d cried, openly, only twice in my life until this weekend. First, when attending the birth of my daughter Emily, and second, when watching Villa beat Tranmere in the 1994 cup semi-final, a victory which signalled my maiden trip to Wembley. Given the fourteen year gap since my last public sobbing, I thought I might get through the remainder of life without another, however this Sunday my golfing ‘performance’ provided grounds for an unwelcome hat trick.

More of that later, but first let me summarise the top scores from this week’s winter league gross doubles competition, a tournament which myself and Keith Douglas so far find ourselves stinking out to high heaven.

Murdoch/Taylor 65

McGillivray/Dempster 65

Roulston/Irvine 66

Messrs McGillivary and Dempster had the unwelcome distraction of playing this week’s round alongside myself, and myself alone, given my partner Keith Douglas’s latest reprehensible absence. Once again he found other fish to fry rather than participate in our doubles tournament (the clue’s in the title Douglas, get with the programme). 

Barry McGillivary and Stuart Dempster are good golfers, they strike the ball crisply, pitch it confidently and putt it soundly. The game can be pretty simple when you do as they do, it was drama free golf from beginning to end. Not for them Hamlet cigar moments in bunkers, monstrously wayward drives landing upon adjacent fairways, or a processions of golf balls disappearing over cliff edges, they played with the minimum of fuss, positioning their drives up the middle, clipping their irons onto greens and holing out within two putts. I, on the other hand, played like I’d swilled ten pints in the Market Bar prior to teeing up and demonstrated a level of golfing incompetence not seen since my grandmother attempted pitch and putt for the first time while on holiday in Ilfracombe, 1983. 

Army golf they call it (left, right, left, right), when there’s simply no telling what is going to happen next, and I completed as hapless a round of golf as I’ve ever had the misfortune to produce. I could scarcely get off the tee but the most outrageous shenanigans were reserved for the green side where a plethora of duffed chips and fearful knifings had me performing an X-rated horror show which found my playing partners visibly shaken. I wasn’t so much playing golf as making a public spectacle of myself. It was abominable.

Eventually, after thirteen holes of lamentable golf, my resolve weakened and I cracked. I’d pushed my tee shot wide right, again, almost out of bounds this time, and had a twenty yard pitch to the green. Now, any half competent golfer would consider this type of shot elementary, rather like a tennis player playing a routine half volley from the baseline, it was a bread and butter kind of shot. But when your confidence is shot to pieces, and you’re approaching each chip as if it were a hand grenade about to go off, you have little chance of executing it satisfactorily, and sure enough, I duffed yet another. Not even the luxury of a preferred lie, permissible in the winter, (whereby a player can spot the ball up like a cherry on a cake) could encourage me to produce an acceptable golf shot, and for the umpteenth time I chunked the ball six feet in front of me and grimaced as if experiencing a bout of trapped wind. This farrago was occurring around every green and by now I was reduced to a gibbering wreck, my bottom lip quivering and upper body convulsing. I wanted my mummy or a straight jacket, I wasn’t fussy which. One last try I thought, you can do this, so I stepped forward sheepishly...only to rocket yet another ankle height exocet twenty paces beyond the green. It was the last straw, I broke down and sobbed.

Barry was the first to console me, putting his arm around my shoulder and offering gentle words of comfort. Stuart took the pitching wedge from my hand, before I saw fit to damage myself with it, and gingerly escorted me away from the scene of the crime, kindly producing a handkerchief with which I could wipe away my tears. The two of them completed the hole, their comfortable par three doing nothing to improve my mood, and then returned to care for a patient who was now lying on the next tee, in the foetal position. This was golf at its cruellest, a sport reducing a grown man to ribbons. Oh how I hated this game.

After a few more words of consolation from my playing partners, I put my shoulders back to complete the final few holes, smiling through the tears and endeavouring not to feel patronised when being congratulated for the most average of shots. I’m sure their hearts were in the right place when they accompanied my lame hundred yard thinners with a deep throated ‘good shot!’ but in truth I wanted to volley them squarely in the cobblers. My golf didn’t improve and I shuffled forward like a moody teenager, hands deep in pockets, kicking every loose piece of turf I came by. There was room for one last farce around the 16th green when I bladed one that threatened to snap Stuart in two, so I picked up and skulked off to the next tee.

Having negotiated the 17th without further humiliation, I didn’t play the last hole, preferring to get the coffees in rather than subject those in the clubhouse to a festive pantomime show. I nestled into my chair and looked on as Barry and Stuart skilfully completed another solid par to card a fine eighteen hole total of 65. (For the record, I’d no returned as early as the 2nd hole when racking up a preposterous eight, topping my tee shot out of bounds before chunking two chips and three putting).

Hopefully Douglas is on form next Sunday otherwise we face the humiliation of finishing tenth in this winter league. Bad enough in itself, worse still when you consider there are only nine entrants. Meantime, let me wish McGillivary and Dempster the best of luck as they compete in forthcoming weeks for a place on finals day,  an occasion you can be rest assured I’ll be attending in a spectating capacity only.

Winter League floodage

Poor weather put paid to any notion of golf at Stonehaven Golf Club this weekend, the course closed due to flooding. Hardy members play in most conditions but the closure was unavoidable, enjoyable golf not being conducive to teeing off ankle deep in water or attempting to putt through veritable ponds. It’s a shame, I’d practiced all week for competition day and was set to reduce the course to ribbons. It’ll just have to wait till next Sunday instead. 

I adore Stonehaven Golf Club, so to be denied my weekly fix was a wounder indeed. I’m not the greatest player in the world, my expectations aren’t always high in terms of performance, but what I can always depend on are the surroundings, the views, the scenery and the welcome. Its a well kept course with an attractive clubhouse in a wonderful setting, heaven on earth to me that place. Some clubs are a little snooty, but not this one, everyone’s welcomed by friendly staff whether members or not. If you’re not golfing you can stop by for coffee or a spot of food, the restaurant’s excellent, with Ziggy’s varied menus and super service. (If this is coming across as an advertorial I apologise! I’m just proud of the place that’s all, and need to keep them sweet so they don’t remove my name from the junior championship winners board 😊. 1986 for the record). 

The course was closed then for the weekend, but not the clubhouse, so I sauntered up there for a Sunday afternoon stroll, nursing a coffee upon arrival while chewing the fat with Mr Innes. Given the time he spends up there it’s bewildering that he’s such a poor golfer but with the course unplayable, I was spared his inept golf and subjected to his chat instead. Having bored each other half to death, I then wondered down to the 2nd green to take the photograph you see here, and this reminded me of a peculiar episode which occurred back in the eighties. 

Walking to the 2nd green from the clubhouse, you cross the 18th fairway, a stretch of turf which, inexplicably, became the resting place for my 5-iron club head over three decades ago. Back then, I’d launched a tee shot from the 18th only for my club-head to come clean off upon impact, disappearing in the same direction as my golf ball. I found my ball but lost my club-head and, despite several searches, haven’t found it to this day. I’ve a hunch it isn’t there anymore, thirty five years later, maybe I need to get over it, but I’ve always wondered what happened. How can you lose half a golf club from a distance of thirty yards or so? Perhaps someone found it one day. Maybe a green keeper after it’d mangled his grass cutting machine, maybe another golfer who repaired it and uses it even now. Or the grasses might have overwhelmed it after it lay undiscovered for a few weeks, submerging it beneath the turf. Who knows, but I still bristle over losing that club, it was my favourite. We hang onto some things don’t we? I think I need to let it go. 

No winter league update for you then this week, but hopefully we’ll be blessed by better weather next weekend after which I can regale you with details of a new course record.

Winter League Rd 5 (Lucy Locket)

Back in the eighties, when I last played the game of golf with a degree of capability, I’d often be found out on the course with one of the two Douglas brothers; Jack or Keith. Sadly, I then discovered alcohol (unrelated incident) which I devoted myself to for the next two decades, a sorry tale which I’ll save for another day. An 8 handicapper at the age of 16, I then barely touched a golf club until my mid thirties and my early promise amounted to naught. By the grace of God, I’ve been sober for sixteen years now, but it’s fair to say my golf has suffered irretrievably and my current handicap of 14 is far from an unjust one. I’ve just never really got the mojo back and hack around the course in a damage limitation exercise these days.

Meantime, while I was drinking myself to the brink of oblivion for twenty years, the brothers Douglas, both of whom I played with this week, continued to play their golf without stinting. Such dedication has seen them achieve handicaps as low as 3, a feat of which they should be rightly proud. I don’t consider it unfair therefore, given his virtual scratch player status, to expect my winter league partner, Keith Douglas, to take the lead when contributing towards our team tally. Yet once again this week he was to be found wanting.

This accompanying photograph shows you how he arrived at the course on Sunday, his scorecard later suggesting that he’d left his leathers on for the entirety of the round. He shanked his approach shot at the first, topped his drives at the third and eleventh and hit fewer greens in regulation than Birmingham City have won league titles. We meekly hustled our way to a mediocre score of 67, my good self steering the ship to respectability, and now face the very real prospect of not qualifying for the finals. We need to step it up big style, or rather, Douglas does.

The round wasn’t without its comedy moments, aside from Keith’s shank at the first. (My uncle Eric Soutar, by the way, would walk straight off the course if he hit a socket, or ‘Lucy Lockett’ as he called it. Perhaps Douglas should have followed his lead). On the12th green the witless goon trod in a foot deep puddle and spent the remainder of the round with his right foot squelching with every step, however this wasn’t the only instance of misfortune. Earlier in the round, as we departed from the 7th tee, Jack had found himself spread eagled, face down in the mud having lost his footing, his trolley making haste towards the gorse bushes below. Stifled titters met his descent but we struggled to repress them when he rose to his feet looking for all the world like a scrum half who’d just spent eighty hard minutes on a sodden Murrayfield.

Our hapless fourball was completed by Charlie Gordon, a left handed player who struck a deceptively long ball, albeit a luminous yellow one. His half swing back-lift didn’t threaten to shift the ball a significant number of yards towards the target but he boomed it a hefty distance nonetheless. Quite what he made of his three playing partners is anyone’s guess; Jack covered in mud, Keith’s beard touching the belt on his trousers and my good self talking in a language completely foreign to him (Brummy). Nevertheless, he manfully soldiered on and carded a very respectable score despite the distractions around him.

To say the Douglas/Russon partnership is behind the eight-ball is an understatement, we’re gonna need to defy the odds to qualify for the finals, but never say never. If I can get over my chipping yips and Douglas can return to somewhere near the form of a 3 handicapper we may have a chance. I’ll certainly play my part, I’ve booked out the practice area from noon till night for every day this week, but whether I can persuade my playing partner to get with the programme and take his golf rather more seriously is another question. It’s time to step up Douglas, or ship out.