What this means is that for five weekend days through the early months of the year, there is an 08:30 shotgun start on one of the courses at the Club, with tees 1-6, 7-12 and 13-18 each hosting an inter-country match. We used to have six two-man teams (the format is foursomes) but recently double-manned one of the tees to allow 14 people to play for each team every weekend. This has worked pretty well and the atmosphere in the bar beforehand (anticipation...) and afterwards (explanation and excuses) is always great.
Today was the occasion of the second round, the first one having played a couple of weeks ago, and everything is very tight with no clear leader having emerged yet. I have been looking forward to competing as there are only two dates that I cam make this year and this is one of them. I have always played for the Rest of the World team (by marriage?) and we have had some success in the recent year.
Unfortunately, I have picked up an awful winter cold/sore throat and really didn't feel up to playing this morning. Our team Captain, John, did have a reserve up his sleeve and my absence didn't cause any logistical problems. That being said, we suffered a 2-5 defeat and now find ourselves in the bottom half of the table which is led by Andrew's Welsh team (cue sheep noises....). But there are still 3 rounds to go, so all is not lost!
In the afternoon, my job was to to do the draw for the Anglo American Trophy: this is the premier handicap singles matchplay event at Burhill and this year we have a record 179 entrants. To win this requires 8 victories and is a long haul (self promotion alert: I won it in 2007 so can speak from experience). In days gone by, it used to take the best part of the day to do the draw manually and then to fill out the pairings on paper: today it took Steve and me about 5 minutes to complete online...this must be some kind of progress!
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