A Hackers Guide To Royal Ascot - Hole 2 (Brick Kiln)

Having survived the trials and tribulations of our opening hole we move onto the second, a 535 yard (off the white tees) par 5, stroke index 6. The hole dog legs to the right and is protected by a ditch about 180 yards off the tee, out of bounds tight right the entire length of the drive and by a solitary dead tree trunk in the fairway.

The guide from the clubs website says "An acute dogleg right par 5 of over 500 yards, anything leaking right down the length of the hole will be hard to find in deep rough. Wide of this rough is out of bounds. The central guarding front bunker is some 25 yards from the putting surface. The green is small, with some devilish pin locations".

In fact, the dead tree is a good reference point and the drive should be aimed to the left of that and towards the single bunker. Anything too straight may find the path forward blocked by the trunk. The second shot needs to be played towards the cross bunker short of the green (which also foreshortens the view of the hole) and must miss the bunker to the left of the fairway. Depending on where the flag is located, particularly when it is at the back and on the left, the sensible play is to the heart of the green which slopes uphill from front to back. The back left pin is a real sucker and brings the deep bunker to the left of the green into play.

As with the majority of holes at Royal Ascot if you can get your drive away the hole does (should) play relatively easy and it should be a routine par (or nett par at worse). Of course golf is rarely that simple and I have had more than one mishap on the hole. Probably the biggest faux pas was in the Club Foursomes and I was playing with a 26 handicap (ex) member and long time friend called George McMeekin.

Conditions had been tough with persistent drizzle and a blustery wind. Foursomes is an unforgiving format at the best of times but with a combination of some decent play, good strategy and pieces of good fortune we found ourselves atop the leaderboard at lunch. We had an iffy but not disastrous start when we came to the second. I hit a pretty decent drive, straight but short of the dead tree. My partner had plenty of room and to be fair it didn't really come into play and I thought his fairway wood was a bold (foursomes parlance for reckless) option. Sure enough he hit a huge carving slice out of bounds.

I dropped a ball and prepared to play our 4th shot. Those in glass houses..... as I saw his slice and raised it with a higher more powerful one even further out of bounds and into the woods. He dropped again and pulled an iron out for the 6th shot (five shots and we hadn't moved an inch down the hole yet). He knobbled it down and left about 100 yards in.

I can't speak for George but my brain was in golfing meltdown by now and that is my only defence for pulling a simple wedge approach into the left hand greenside bunker. Inevitably it plugged and George failed to get it out. I hit an apologetic bunker shot onto the fringe of the green for 9 and all that was left was for us to add the obligatory three putt for a nice round dozen.

So there it is. A potential birdie opportunity or a potential card wrecker especially as the drive only needs a slight fade to be flirting with potential disaster and a reload. Right that's two holes down and hopefully our scorecard is relatively intact. Onwards to the third.