Ok it was 40 miles each way but a least it was open. We were not the only ones there at first but the others were gone before we got started. The owner was helpful and got us started on a practice range. This showed us straight away that M hits the ball further than I do. No real surprise there. Without the help of the owner we selected St Andrews and made a schoolboy error. I thought red and white were some kind of colour code for each golfer. It turns out the red was for red tees and white was for white. So I played off the Lady tees. We did not realise this for the first few holes. The putting we found to be more difficult than in real golf. You have to understand the difference between ft and yds for a start. The owner said we should have waited for him to get us started then he would have made sure we had some putting practice. He also said they the greens at St Andrews were not easy. We found that you have to retrieve your ball quickly after playing each shot or the computer can become confused and award a score to the opponent. You can only go back one shot using a mulligan.
After the first few holes we got into the swing of it and both made reasonable progress. With my advantage of having shorter holes it was not a fair contest but I managed to get round in 105 and M scored 110. This does not count to any Xmas trophy but was simply a fun alternative to real golf when golf is closed. I suspect that we would not have scored so well on the real St Andrews!
Would try again in similar circumstances. (Although the owner told us it was likely to close if no one wanted to buy it).
