36 - Another Day, Another Round, Another Success...

As he was going to see Oasis the night before and would no doubt trying to drink his own body weight in lager, Lucky took the next day off to recover. I got a text off him that asked if I fancied a sneaky round of golf that afternoon. Until I received his text I didn’t but now the idea was in my head and I had to sort it out. A quick discussion with my manager and I was on the phone to book a round.

I phoned Kirkby out of hope rather than expectation and was, as usual, though to Sweary McGeary. Kirkby was closed due to water logging but the man with a thousand expletives was up beat about the course claiming that the greens were in the best condition of the year and, if there was no rain, the course would be in pristine condition the next day, almost perfect in fact. I thought I’d ask if there was any chance of a sneaky round today anyway, “no fucking chance” came the predictable reply. I phoned Bootle knowing that they never close and we were booked to tee off at 1:15.

Me and Lucky met in the car park and commented on how nice the day was. No wind, brilliant sunshine, relatively warm, fantastic. Something had to go wrong though, but what? Then we saw the queue at the first tee. There were about four games backed up meaning we’d be hanging around for about 40 minutes before hitting a ball. Because we are ingenious so-and-so’s we decided to start by playing the back nine first meaning we’d miss all the queues. Brilliant!

We ambled over to the 10th tee where two lads were limbering up. It seems they were waiting for a mate and asked if we wanted to play through but we told them we would wait as we are shit and would only hold them up. One of them commented on the fact that we didn’t look shit, in fact we looked – according to him – like a couple of American PGA Pros! I explained that it is easy to look the part but much more difficult actually being it. He agreed and said he was the same; “all the gear and no idea!” That sums me and Lucky up nicely I thought.

It took a while for me to remember how to hit the ball but Lucky was flying, in fact he got his first ever par on the 11th (a short par 3) and looked like he was going to burst into tears! We continued around the course hitting good shot after good shot and were level pegging by the time the arse fell out of my game on the 14th. The hole is a long son-of-a-bitch par 3…over water so there was no chance I was going to do well on it. Three balls into the lake later and my round was officially fucked. The confidence drained out of me with each plop of ball into shitty lake.

I tried to make it up on the next hole but I made a complete pig’s ear of that too. The only good thing to come out of the 15th was the copy of Fiesta (a male, ahem, interest mag ) I found in the bushes behind the green which took my mind off the fuck awful golf I was playing. I was distracted (that isn’t a euphemism by the way) and started to hit the ball properly again. It is amazing what the power of nekkid women can do…

By the time we got to the 18th which was actually our ninth as we played the back nine first instead of the front nine I was on the verge of walking away. It was only the fact that, for the first time in all the three times I have been there, the 1st tee was empty that we decided to have a crack at the first nine holes. Anyone who has played Bootle will tell you that the front nine is much more difficult than the back nine so I wasn’t looking forward to it to be honest.

I’m glad that Lucky convinced me to have a crack though as it was possibly my most enjoyable nine holes since I started playing six whole weeks ago. There was no-one behind us so we could take our time, the weather was glorious and I was playing ok. The odd shot aside, I was hitting the ball fairly straight and fairly long. I even managed to find the fairway for the first time on the rock hard 7th (a fearsome par 5 with a green on the top of hill like something out of a giant Crazy Golf Course or summat). It was on this hole where I played my best shot of the day as I pitched a delicious chip to within 2 feet of the hole.

As we made our way to the 9th (which was actually our 18th) I started to reflect on what a good round we had. Lucky was excellent off the tee and was starting to find his range with the new Klingon putter. His short game was still a little hit and miss but overall he was much improved, a fact reflected in the final score when we worked out Lucky had knocked a massive 28 shots off his previous score.

I had did ok too knocking 15 off my total but most importantly I was playing better and enjoying the game. When we did the totals we had both scored 103, agonisingly close to the magical 100 (my pre-Christmas target). At this rate my dream of ‘not being completely shit’ could be realised by next summer.