A Small White Ball and Several Big Sticks: Sun 10 Nov 2013 18 Sunny Holes at Dummer

Only 1 game this week, still better than None!

Meet with M at 11 for 12:24 round. Only 15 quid after 12 and we were told that we might be able to get off early. With sunset at about 16:24 we knew that there was a possibility that it could go dark before the end.

We went for the 14 balls each warmup where M hit a few PW's miles. With plenty time before 12 we hit a few 9i's on the practice hole. No one arrived until just before 12 they (2 ball) set off straight away. At 12 no-one else was there so we set off at 12:01. I think we were both a bit worried that we were taking someone else's slot as we both hit a duff off the tee. We need not have worried as we were on the second before the next group started. We managed to keep up with the 2 ball in front and were never caught by anyone behind. We must be getting a bit better as we would have been left behind and would have been caught!

Anyway perhaps we should always allow a free mulligan from tee number 1? I set off with a terrible score including my first 5 putt for ages. The greens seemed very fast? So M won the first and the second. I had a nice chip in from the rough on the 3rd and my game picked up a bit. I messed up the 7th after getting to the green ok the 4 putting. (Another rare event!). At the end of the front 9 M was 2 up.

I messed the 13th up with a duff off the tee and a 3 putt. I also messed up the 15th up by going well right into a bunch of trees and had to take a penalty although I found the ball.

The bunkers were not very sandy and we play our own particular winter bunker rules (a free drop out where the ball entered the bunker not closer to the hole). I had a couple of these in the last 3 holes.

At the end of the day it was a poor score for me and M just managed to beat me (for the second time in a row) so gets the reward of another handicap point off. My score is here. The handicap is not far off as it went down to the last 3 holes where I could have drawn if I had played a bit better Or M had played worse on the 17th.

If I had avoided the 5 and 4 putt and avoided an off duff I could easily have scored less than 110 which I have done recently with no trouble. Still it was a better score than the week before and still great fun!

On the other hand M played more holes like a proper golfer with more real bogeys than me but also had more bad ones than I did. M's score could easily be a lot less without 5 penalties, several duffs and not too many fairways. (Sorry M!)

The weather was amazing for the time of year and we played without coats until the last hole where we had to wait for the 2 in front as they had caught the group in front of them. It went cold as soon as the sun dropped below the trees. We finished just after 15:30 so no problem with sunset!