I drove up to play golf with my brother this week. We were going to play a round with my parents, but h suggested we get up early (4:15am
) and get 18 in first at the club at which he plays first.
Well, you can never have too much golf, can you?
So off we toddle at stupid o'clock. His coure is a mess - soaked, what with all the recent rain in the midlands/South Yorks. Much of it it is borderline unplayable - even though we're playing preferred lies, there's frequently nowhere better to play it. That said, my brother and his playing companions have recently clearly been abusing this, to include once they got into a bunker with a puddle in it, they just dropped out of the bunker, claiming it 'was impossible to play out of a bunker on wet sand'. This was such rubbish that I thought I'd wait till I got in a bunker and then play out of it, but didn't actually get the chance.
On another day, there may have been good stuff to learn out there in terms of ball striking out of puddles, but for me it was a pretty miserable experience, scoring 121
, and the only saving grace for me was that my brother (who is a 13 HC compared to my 26) shot exactly 13 shots below with 108, and therefore whilst I'd played some memorably **** golf, at least some of it was clearly due to the conditions.
Then in to the car and on to Allestree - a muni course with what my bro described as the worst greens he'd ever played on.
Ah, this is very familiar - much like my home course! Hill everywhere, interesting and tight holes, drives through narrow gaps over tree-filled ravines. The greens are perfectly acceptable, even though three of them are temps due to the current weather.
The outward nine is 68, which is cool on a course I hadn't played before which is longer and harder than my home course. I birdied the par 6th with a great 15 foot putt, and put a lot of long ones down. The back nine was less good - 53 - by now getting v tired, and concentration starting to slip, but the resulting 99 will be filed under 'Generally Satisfactory'.
Again, I got frustrated with my older brother, but maybe that's what they're for? After taking 4 shots in a bunker he announced in venemous frustration that these bunkers weren't bunkers, they were mud traps, and it was impossible to play out of bunker with no sand in it, on which he dropped his ball out of the bunker and finished the hole.
I looked in the bunker - it was sand that had become hard-packed from the rain from which you couldn't play a splash shot but with which there was nothing wrong - it was just a question of trying to pick the ball off cleanly with a PW or 9I. It happened again in a later bunker, and when he later still put his provo into a bunker, I dropped a 'practice' ball in and played it anyway without saying anything (which I know I shouldn't have done) in an effort to forestall any more *****ing. Ineveitably he declared that bunker wasn't like the other ones
Ah well. More importantly, I shouldn't have let it annoy me. I know it's a basic rule of golf, but I guess it's even harder when it's your own family. Anywho - I was marking the card so I just subtley didn't write his score on those holes and I think he got the message