A Good Old Fashioned Whooping

It was the second round of the Winter knockout yesterday and my partner Mike Stannard and I were taking on Alan Cutler and Peter Spriggs in a keenly awaited match. We'd arranged to play last week but with the course on temporary greens, the consensus was that it would a much fairer result to delay and play on the proper course. We'd gone out and played on the frozen course as a four anyway and halved the game and it had merely whetted the appetite further for this encounter.

The course was damp in places and there was a gusty wind blowing as we stood on the first tee under a leaden sky although we'd been promised no rain by that lovely young girl that does the weather on BBC news. None of us hit great tee shots on the first but Alan set what was going to be the tone throughout by pitching to five feet and holing for an unlikely par and a one up lead.

My partner was using brand new custom fitted Titleist clubs that had never seen the golf course before and he hit a peach of a christening drive down the second. However he and I both proceeded to make heavy weather of the hole and I was standing over a twenty foot putt downhill and a breaking both ways for a half. To be honest it was perfect in every sense and dropped dead centre. It should have been a catalyst for us to kick on but in truth both Mike and I were playing poorly. We gave the third away and a double bogey six was good enough for the win. We repeated the mistake at the fifth and were suddenly three down.

Even when we looked like getting a hole back Peter or Alan were finding ways to make a half and were gelling perfectly as a team. We were trying but nothing was clicking and one good hole was followed by a bad one. Indeed at times both Mike and I were struggling to put two consecutive shots together. I tossed the seventh away with gay abandon with a three putt from fifteen feet. Even when I executed perfectly as I did on the ninth with a good drive and a rifled 5 wood, set out over the right hand bunker to allow for the fierce wind, there wasn't to be any reward. I was out by a foot or so and the shot caught the left hand bunker but rather than find the bottom of the trap this ball lodged towards the back lip. I was faced with a stance with one foot in and one foot out of the bunker. I didn't contribute further after my first attempt to escape.

With a huge deficit to make up we needed a fast start on the back nine and it never came. Mike went right off the tenth tee and I missed the green with my approach. We got one back at the next when for once both Alan and Peter found trouble together and I made the most of the shot I got at the twelfth to hole out from three feet for another half. However the gap was insurmountable and with Peter making a par of his own and Alan a nett par with his shot it was "Goodnight Irene" and we were humbled 5&4 on the fourteenth green.

The opposition played good golf but to be honest both Mike and I were poor by our own standards and we certainly didn't replicate the form we'd shown in the friendly encounter last week. On the plus side, Mike was hitting his new clubs pretty solidly and it was his normally reliable short game and putting that were out of kilter. In my case it was a case of not knowing what was coming next. One good shot, one destructive one. It wasn't good enough and to be honest apart from two or three holes I let Mike down a fair bit.

The chance of glory has gone, in that event at least. We'll have a go in the pairs better ball stableford in February and I think we'll go into the Volvo knockout again this year. We've issues to resolve from last year and need closure following our defeat at the first extra hole to an outrageous forty yard putt from off the putting surface that cannoned into the flag dead centre and dropped. If it hadn't it was going off the green. The one and only time the opposition had led all day. Like I say, we've got unfinished business in that event.

What can you do but hold your hands up and say we got a good old fashioned beating. The golf wasn't good enough and from my own perspective I need Rhys ap Iolo to give the swing another look. I know what I 'm trying to achieve and when I get it right, oh boy is it good, but its doing it for eighteen holes that's the big issue right now. Still it's winter golf, the course is playing its longest, the wind was difficult (not using it as an excuse) and the swing was found wanting. As long as I get my game on track for the opening salvo at Woburn on March 29th then I'll be happy.