30 - Addictive Basket Challenge Too Hard To Resist...

Like the night before the rain was coming down in sheets thick as lead and the wind was howling like erm, a howly thing so an hour at the range was the only logical thing to do. I sent Lucky a sneaky text and he phoned me back to say he was curled up in front of the fire like a cat or something. I mentioned the Yellow and Blue Basket Challenge and he said he would be at the range in 15 minutes!

Again the place was virtually deserted so we took a couple of bays near the end of the range to the right. As we got there I pondered how many balls I was going to slice clean out of the place onto the racecourse. The next Grand National will be a farce with all the horses slipping and sliding on the hundreds of balls littering the grass like a toddler falling on its arse after treading on marbles scattered across a laminate floor…or summat.

We limbered up by smashing balls up the range with our driver. Paul was his consistently long, consistently straight self with his ‘Lucky 13’ working well in the chill night. ‘Arthur’ was playing up. I couldn’t get the ball to go higher than my knee or further than I could spit. So frustrating. The solution was easy and predictable. All I did was keep my head still and the ball flew high, straight and handsome.

Then it was on to the hybrid. As Lucky said when he saw it, you can’t go wrong for a tenner. I tried it off the small tee and, like last week, it flew down the range with a low trajectory making it good for sneaky Sally Gunnell’s down the fairway. Is it supposed to do that? Surely it should fly high to gain more yards? It is more than likely that I’m mishitting it like all my other clubs.

After dicking about with the woods and hybrids it was time for the real reason we were at the range; Yellow and Blue Basket Challenge! First up was the yellow fella about 100 yards away. As I’m the reigning champion I went first and almost bingoed it immediately. Lucky isn’t as confident with his irons so wasn’t expecting much but after a few shots to get his eye in so to speak he was plopping balls around the basket. Game on.

The game went on for about 10 minutes with a lot of near misses until I hit a bit of a shanker that was dead on line but wasn’t going to danger any air traffic passing over. It flew low, bobbled a couple of times and then made it into the basket…I think! I was claiming it though and Lucky was gracious enough to give it to me anyway.

Next was attacking ‘Bluey’. 50 yards, freaky quarter swing with a 9 iron, addictive as fuck. Me and Lucky we launching balls quick and fast and getting much closer than the last challenge which is what you would expect seeing at the basket is within spitting distance. The game ended quickly as we ran out of balls without finding the target despite the squeals and howls from us.

I think I prefer playing when the weather is bad, it makes me feel like I’m suffering for my art or something…plus there is no queue and you can make as much noise as you want as you dick about trying to slice balls over the net at the side of the range. The important thing is that I’m still enjoying it.