Day 328 - British Golf

I had been invited by a friend here, Brad, to join him for a four-ball at around lunchtime.  He had a couple of other guys lined up, Bob and Don, and we met up on the practice ground before proceeding to the first tee.  The request was made: could we play a "British" game?  I explained how golf was played at Burhill, but I am not sure the concept of meeting up in the morning for the Roll-up translated terribly well: the general reaction seemed to be that if you met up at 8 o'clock in the bar, why wouldn't you still be there at midday?

No such problems here: the bar is certainly not open at that time of the morning!  We did though agree that we would play a 4BBB game, with bits on the side.  We replaced the £1-£1-£2 with $3-$3-$6 and settled on 50c per bit.  Balls were thrown in the air (another unheard of custom here!) and I was paired up with Don, against Brad and Bob.  It was at this point that my new partner shared that he had hardly played a game in many months...

I managed a decent birdie on the first to get us one ahead and was, briefly, worried that I might find myself in that embarrassing position of having proposed a game and then winning easily (never a nice place to be). I needn't have worried though... After a few very scrappy holes (including an incident where one of our opposition picked up and pocketed not one but two balls that were not his...) things tightened up and we ended up the first half all square.  We again got ourselves into an early lead on the back nine but this soon evaporated and two excellent pars by Brad meant that we moved to the 17th tee dormie two down.

This was going to be tough as I was giving shots all around on both holes. A regulation par on the difficult 17th won a hole back and then my all my partner had to do was two-putt from 12 ft on the last to win the hole, half the back nine and the match....

Ah well, maybe next time?