I now know where our mistake lay – signing up for the morning on the timesheet. If only we’d selected an afternoon slot how different the day might have been. But the hour had changed, summertime was here. I’d hopped out of my bed in the morning, my outfit for the day laid out from the night before. Australian Spoons, I thought, best to dress appropriately. I dressed in my ¾ length summer trousers, my short sleeved shirt and my lovely hat with all the corks dangling from the brim. Then I opened the blind…
So the 4 of us went out, swaddled to the eyeballs and beyond in light of the brisk, somewhat damp weather. So it seems that the only benefit of the hour change to date was a longer day of rain – definitely not worth losing the hour’s sleep.
It was my first time to play Foursomes / Greensomes and I found it to be a real high pressure situation. For ‘tis bad enough when you duff a shot and the only one who suffers is yourself. When you duff it and then hand it someone else to sort out it is terrible hard on the ego. My in-depth ruminations on same distracted me so much that the Lovely Lady L, with whom I was playing for the first time, had to carry me for the first 5 holes. Which she did, admirably.
At least on the 6th I hit a beaut of a putt. Actually, ‘twas only a lucky putty, but it went whirly-gig around the hole and in – which was nice.
We trundled on, suffering in the complete opposite of silence. Goodness, but it was fierce cold. I supplied a mini choccie break on the 10th which provided a little calorific uplift. The chocolate had to be held in the mouth for a moment to induce melting and reduce the risk of cracking teeth, but the minor delay was worth it. My somewhat sluggish grey matter had a mini, choccie-initiated breakthrough. I realised that if I could manage to outdrive the Lovely Lady L, she’d have to take the 2nd shot (hers were humblingly ever so much better than mine) and my duffing opportunities would be marginally reduced. The message had finally travelled around my body – a long and messy journey – by the 16th. I stood up, I drove, I assumed the tres attractive mouth-hanging-open-dribble-forming facial expression I use to express happy surprise. Straight down the fairway my ball lay and it were one whole metre IN FRONT of the yellow M&M on the fairway (not giant candy covered chocolate and neither tasty nor edible – trust me). One whole metre in front. A mere 149m to centre of green. Mmmmmm.
Lovely Lady L hit a little pitch to in front of the pond and I stood up, inflated with confidence, to hit the next shot. It teased me bad by doing a Froggy skimfest across the pond before wedging itself in the bank a good 2 foot under water. I fell back to earth so hard my teeth clicked. AND my drive at the 17th went splish, splosh, sink into the insatiable River Barrow.
But we’d made at around the course. The rain was getting ominously sleety and the wind blasted past our final destination (clubhouse) and concentrated its energy into the funnel of the 18th fairway. We stood together as a hardy team of 4 stalwart golfers. Whoever’s shot it was stood up to take it, facing the wind head on. The other 3 stood with our backs to the wind, heads down, shoulders hunched. But we remained entirely cud-free, so zero bovine references shall be tolerated.
By 3p.m. the blizzard resulted in the closure of the course.
Never any cattle on the course when
Golfing @ Garryhinch…