Slop Jocky
Amongst Golfers and Buddhists
Dad’s Putter (Wednesday medal 14th August 2013)
thirty years since I had a set of new golf clubs, maybe a few more, I remember them well. I was a young teenager playing at Lockerbie golf club and had saved up from some work done on my next door neighbour’s garden, digging down into the ground and taking our all stones and rocks, paid £1.20 per hour.
Wilson Sam Snead and they cost about £90 I think, a lot of money back then and a lot of gardening.
This set of irons cost £199 including delivery, bought over the internet from Carlisle Golf Centre. Calloway Diablo is the make. Seven irons five iron through to sand wedge.
I am away Tuesday night and arrive back to Sunnybrae, ready to do some work at twenty past ten on the Wednesday morning and there is the box with carefully wrapped clubs in plastic. The excitement is tangible, not as pronounced as when I got the set thirty years back.
I do some work in the upstairs office; there are three of us I can take things a bit easier.
Emails, check share prices, arrange interviews, hunt for head chef job, update credit control list and check it.
Sort Golf Clubs
Over lunch, the sun is out and I take my old set of clubs out and change for the new ones, keeping the new woods which I picked up at The County Golf Club in Dumfries two years back and the cheap ten pound putter which I got five or six years back in the Pawn Shop in the centre of Dumfries.
Back to work
Golf tees and balls, all laid out and ready, fresh water, some new mixed nuts and fruit in a small round tin which used to hold a golf game and was a present from my brother a couple of Christmas back.
Before heading up, I change the putter for my dad’s old Ping putter. He has given my all my golf clubs going back twenty years.
5 pm and I am up at the golf club, keen with Colin, my next door neighbour and Vin and Phil from Eskdalemuir, two of the three golfing Buddhists.
We draw and I am out with Phil
We both start badly
An eight at the first hole followed by some more missed putts and the game is a struggle. I three put the eight and the par three ninth, up the hill, Moffat’s signature hole. Out in 45. Eleven over par and struggling. Phil, a lovely man, aged sixty five and as good natured as can be, is struggling also.
A smiling Vin is waiting on the tenth tee, Colin has called it a day.
We settle down.
Vin and myself par the 10th, par the 11th, both longish par fours.
I pitch from thirty yards to fifteen feet at the 11th and hole the put.
Vin and myself par the 12th and the 13th. Phil and Vin have puts of less than ten feet for twos. I don’t. I hole one from ten feet for a par.
The par five 14th and I hole from ten feet again for another par.
There is hope.
The fifteenth sees me back with a one over par bogey. Vin has fallen off a little by this time and Phil is struggling on.
The sixteenth is another par three and another long put sees me make par.
Two more pars and I will make the buffer zone and my handicap will not go up.
Six feet for a part at the 17th and it is my honour on the 18th tee.
I take one of the new rescue clubs, a bit like an old five wood, and pull the ball a little left. The new pitching wedge hits truly through the ball and sends it high onto the green, if the fading late summer light. I chip back to about twelve feet above the hole, a testing put with a lot of borrow. Not to be and for the first time in the back nine dad’s putter doesn’t hole out.
We shake hands and smile, they laugh a lot these guys. Vin and Phil have half pints of lager in Moffat clubhouse, I have a pint with lime.
It is shortly dark and time to head down the hill.
We will meet up again soon, dad’s putter and my golfing partners.
RSS