It's only a bit of rain!

It rained, it rained very hard.

Fortunately the weather appeared to clear up and so Ross and I headed up to the club.
We got the clubs out and got ready. At that point the lightning started and thunder could be heard. Golfers headed down the fourteenth fairway from the fifteenth tee; gathering those on the fourteenth and all headed back towards the clubhouse. Golfers appeared from all directions to shelter from the storm. There was very little rain; just a light drizzle and the gap between flash and thunder was over 10 seconds. It also appeared to be moving to the south. Ross and I did some practice in the nets and, as the course was clear, we then wandered over to the first tee. 

By now there was blue sky appearing from the north and the rain had all but stopped. We teed off; Ross hit a perfect drive up the middle, my tee shot went off to the right into the first cut. I hit a magnificent second leaving me just over 100 yards short and then put my third into a bunker on the left in front of the green. A magnificent shot out of the bunker gave me a 5 footer to par the hole, which was the first time I have ever made par on this hole. I had beaten Ross by 3 shots and was buzzing, this was going to be a fantastic round and I was going to get close to 100. Unfortunately I had hit my peak far too early; what followed was almost, but not entirely, quite unlike golf. I don’t know what it was I was doing but playing golf certainly wasn’t in the top 100 descriptions.

Disaster after disaster happened and I was followed by the bogey fairy. I did manage to redeem myself on a couple of holes; a 6 on the twelfth was good and there were pars on the thirteenth and fifteenth, both par 3s. Overall, however I couldn’t hit a tee shot to save my life; most of the rest of the shots only went 100 or so yards, one actually went 90 degrees to where I was aiming ending up 30 yards behind me. It was a good job there were no other golfers out and that, by the time we got to the seventeenth green it was becoming difficult to see. My putting was the only part of my game that deserved the description of ‘golf’; averaging 2 per hole.

Ross wasn’t happy with his round either and both of us are going to have to get down the range and do some practice. For my part I will have to read the definition of the word golf and see if I can actually do anything that remotely resembles it. 

There were positives from the round though. I hit some really good bunker shots, a couple of my approach shots were good and the putting was much improved. I also added a couple of extra par holes to my tally, so I’m getting close to a par round; albeit stretched over many months and numerous attempts.

With the nights drawing in now it means less time for golf and our Thursday evening jaunts will be severely time constrained. Practice will be done on the floodlight range and the likelihood of handicaps is not high.  

We will try and make at least on last hurrah this Thursday and head out just after 5 o’clock; that should give us enough time for 8 holes. 

Hopefully this time I’ll be able to call it golf; well at least a little bit of it.