Almanac Golf: Golf – it can give you the shits!

 

GOLF – ‘IT CAN GIVE YOU THE SHITS’

Bernard Whimpress

 

‘Have you ever broken par?’

 

A simple question.

 

‘Yes, well, maybe …’

 

When I was sixteen, and playing off a 12 handicap at Murray Bridge, I hit 69 off the stick (one over par) and scored 46 Stableford points. That was close.

 

The following year I shot 68 in a practice round, but that doesn’t count.

 

I joined the North Adelaide Golf Club in 1967 when the South Course was a par 73 but struggled with my putter after moving from scrapes to greens. The next year THEY, the POWERS THAT BE, the COMMITTEE redesignated two of the par fives to fours on the advice of the PRO, making the course a par 71. The PRO never was much help.

 

I played at North Adelaide until 1994 and from the ages of twenty to forty-five maintained a handicap of five, then I went out to six. When I was in my best form, I once put together a string of sixteen consecutive rounds under 80 but only four were below 75. The ‘yips’ prohibited low scoring.

 

Clunk

 

View from 17th tee at North Adelaide. The eucalypt was on the right side of the fairway.

 

I stood once on the 17^th tee one under par. It’s a beautiful hole with a right-hand right-angle dogleg, demanding a 220-metre drive to a plateau at the top of a hill and then a 200-metre long-iron or fairway wood (often against a brisk south-westerly) to a green below. It was one of the par fives converted to a four.

 

On this day I struck the sweetest of drives, taking a lower trajectory than usual on a line on the lower side of the fairway. It would bounce at the corner of the dogleg, guarded by tall trees, catch the severe downward slope at that point, and roll down the centre of the fairway leaving no more than a nine-iron to the green. A birdie opportunity beckoned.

 

Except.

 

Except for that single branch, diameter scarcely wider than a billiard cue, jutting out from the huge eucalypt seventy metres from the tee. I’d played the hole a few hundred times over half a dozen years and the eucalypt had never come into play. The drive always offered a challenge, but I liked challenges, thrived on them. No worries.

 

CLUNK!

 

What a terrible sound that was when my magnificent drive struck the jutting branch dead centre and fell to earth in thick grass at the tree’s base. The birdie opportunity had vanished in a flash, par went as well, and worse.

 

Remains of the eucalypt today.

 

Double-bogey!

 

You’ll appreciate my thoughts might’ve been scrambled on the 18^th tee. Wherever they were, they weren’t on the game.

 

Another double-bogey.

 

74.

 

My Army

 

I loved match play. I played twenty years of pennant golf and was adventurous with my game. I often made three birdies a round – more than in stroke play, when I adopted a more cautious approach.

 

We had a home game against Marino in July in heavy overcast conditions. Coming off the 15^th green at the top of Montefiore Hill I was two-down against a man who held the Education portfolio in the Dunstan Government and remember thinking ‘I’m only two over the card. I’m playing too well to lose.’

From the fairway plateau 200 metres to 17th green

 

The 16^th was then a 265-metre par four where the fairway dipped and curved slightly left for most of its course before rising to a tiered green. Heavily wooded with a small olive grove on the right side and two or three giant pines to the left, the smart play was a three-iron off the tee and a half-wedge to the green. A par was certain, a one in three chance of a birdie, but this was no time for smart play, not when my opponent had taken an iron and was well placed in the fairway.

 

This was time for daring.

 

I took the driver.

 

I took the driver, and for only the second time in my life reached the green, leaving a thirty-foot uphill putt.  An eagle chance but down in two for birdie. The margin was now one down with two to play.

 

I’ve described the previous misfortune on the 17^th and this time there was no flirting with trees or fine angles as my drive flew to the top of the hill where I wanted it to be. As the rain began pelting down, and the breeze stiffened, a solid four wood to the heart of the green secured par against bogey. Match, square.

 

The 18^th is a fine finishing hole, not long but subtle. A flat wide fairway to a narrowing gap  metres between two Moreton Bay fig trees 200 metres away, then rising steeply to a green on the top of a hill, only the top third of the flagstick visible.

 

My driver was a favourite club, and it would’ve been expected that I’d do what I always did, hit it long and straight, and keep pressure on my opponent.

 

Instead, I did a strange thing, not only given the momentum of the match, but against HISTORY, my PERSONAL GOLFING HISTORY. I took a three-iron, mistimed it, and then watched as my opponent drove his ball fifty metres past me.

 

One of the pleasures of playing home matches were the barbecues organised by the match committee for both teams, as well as club members who came out to watch. I was playing number one for our team, my match was the last to finish, and the team scores were tied three matches apiece. I needed to win.

 

Around 100 supporters gathered behind the last green to witness the finish. I had given away an advantage from the tee and was now faced with a difficult shot of 170 metres to the green.

 

Position from where 3-iron was played to 18th green.

 

I’d not played a lot before crowds but when I did, found they inspired me to lift my performance. Now I saw the 100 and multiplied it in my mind’s eye, a 1000 at least. I’d read about Arnie’s Army in books and magazines and seen it on TV when Arnold Palmer was making one of his famous charges. This was My Army!

 

‘Hit it like a dart’, some of us used to say and this was as crisp a three-iron as I ever struck from wet turf, saw the ball fly directly at the flag, take a checking bounce a metre before the green, and then heard an enormous roar of applause from the crowd gathered.

 

I figured it must be close.

 

It obviously unnerved my opponent who duffed his second shot leaving him forty metres short of the green. He walked to its edge to see my ball a bare six inches from the cup – funny, how we still talk in imperial measurements on the greens – and measure in metrics everywhere else. The hole was conceded. ‘Thank you, Minister.’

 

I guess I shot even par.

 

 

Or thereabouts.

 

Last chance

 

My best opportunity to break par was the day I went out in 36 (one over) and started solidly coming home with par fours at the 10^th and 11^th holes only to have to take a short pause with mild diarrhoea at the toilet block conveniently located before the 12^th tee.

 

I made par three at the short hole and another at the long par four 13^th when my tummy started rumbling and I prevailed upon my playing partners to wait, allow the group behind to play through, while I ran 400 plus metres back to experience my second bout of diarrhoea.

 

Fellow competition players must’ve wondered what they were seeing with me sprinting first in one direction, then the other.

 

When I returned to the 14^th tee my partners might’ve expected me to collapse in an aching heap and dud my drive. Instead, like some sort of Superman, I stepped up and creamed it down the middle and made birdie, birdie, birdie on the next three holes to be two under par walking off the 16^th green with a 69 in prospect.

 

A 69 in prospect.

 

But no.

 

This time the rumbles were truly violent.

 

The clubhouse was 300 metres away: behind the 18^th green, down the hill, past the greenkeeper’s shed.

 

I once more set off at a rapid rate, this time trailing my buggy behind me. This time there would be no prevailing on partners to wait, no coming back.

 

I made it.

 

Just.

 

Before my bowels exploded.

 

Golf – ‘It Can Give You the Shits.’

 

 

More from Bernard can be read Here

 

 

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