Captain's Day

by Terry Ravenscroft

  It is thought by some that two heads are better than one, in fact Mr Captain had voiced that very sentiment only minutes before when discussing with his wife the problem he faced vis-à-vis the boycott of the beer tent, however Armitage would have put up a strong argument against this maxim, as from that moment on his two heads, far from being better than one, started to become considerably worse than one.

  *

  “Lonny Long the Second.”

  “Davis Love the Third.”

  “Fred Fuckem the Fourth.”

  “You can't have that,” protested Norris, immediately. “Not allowed. You can't start making them up until we're playing the fourth.”

  “I thought this was the fourth?” said Pemberton.

  “It's the third.”

  “Sorry,” said Pemberton, then after a second or two's thought, “Bo Weekley.”

  *

  Dogleg Davis had hooked his tee shot at the fourth onto the tenth fairway, which ran more or less parallel to the fourth. Ploughing through the expanse of rough that separated the two mown areas he passed Fidler, who had sliced his tee shot at the tenth onto the fourth fairway.

  “Perhaps we could play each other's balls?” said Davis, jokingly. “Save our legs.”

  “Bollocks,” said Fidler, which was not the response Davis had come to expect from a fellow golfer upon making an obviously light-hearted remark.

  Walking up the left side of the fourth fairway towards his own ball Venables noticed Fidler heading his way. As Fidler was renowned for being a straight hitter it was as rare a prospect as the sight of Davis heading for the tenth fairway was a familiar one, and as such worthy of comment.

  “What are you doing over here, George?” he asked pleasantly, as Fidler drew near. “You're usually straight down the middle.”

  “Bollocks,” said Fidler.

  Meanwhile Jenkins, on arriving at his ball on the right-hand side of the fairway, noticed another ball about ten yards to his right, in the edge of the light rough. He raised an arm and beckoned to Fidler. “I think this must be your ball over here, George.”

  As Fidler made his way over Jenkins stepped over to the ball to identify it. Having done so he called out to Fidler again. “Sorry George, false alarm, it can't be yours, it’s a Pinnacle and you always play Top Flight fours, don't you.”

  “Bollocks,” said Fidler.

  Jenkins blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

  Fidler marched up to him and stopped no more than six inches away, red-faced, hands clenched and barely able to contain his rage. “Are you taking the piss?”

  Jenkins backed away. “Taking the….? No, of course not. Why do you say that?”

  Fidler stepped back a little to give himself room to wag a threatening finger under Jenkins’ nose. “Just watch it that’s all!” he barked, and with that stepped into the light rough and took a vicious swipe at his ball, sending it back in the general direction of the tenth fairway. He set off after it but before he had taken two steps there was the sound of the ball hitting a tree.

  “Shit!” said Fidler.

  Jenkins watched him go, then called to Venables. “I wonder why George has changed from Top Flight after all these years?”

  “And into an arsehole,” said Venables.

  *

  On the second hole Bramwell had hit his tee shot to the right side of the fairway whilst both Plumstone and Healey were up the left side. Plumstone, watched by Healey, now played his approach shot to the green. He made a complete hash of it, topping it, the ball squirting along the ground some thirty yards before coming to a stop.

  “A Daphne Bramwell,” said Healey.

  “What's that?” said Plumstone.

  “Even uglier than Sally Gunnell and not even a good runner.”

  *

  Jones-Jones was having second thoughts about adopting Cuddington’s new way of swinging a golf club as advised by the pro at the Municipal. Not because Cuddington wasn’t having any success with it, on the contrary it was working very well indeed, but because Treforest had tried it with his drive off the second tee and had come unstuck. Whether Treforest’s club foot was influential in it, or whether the problem was that he had made fewer mistakes coming down than he had made going back or fewer mistakes going back than he had coming down wasn’t clear, but what was very clear was that when coming down he had made a complete dog’s breakfast of it and instead of hitting the ball had hit his good foot. The blow was quite a severe one as the new swing, although failing him miserably, had generated quite a bit of extra clubhead speed. His foot immediately began to swell up and throb painfully, which caused him to walk with a limp. As his wearing of a special boot with a three inch thick sole to cater for his club foot meant that he already walked with a limp he was now limping with both feet, which had the effect of making him look as though he was walking normally, albeit hobbling a bit.

  Treforest was pleased about this in a way, as he’d never walked without a limp before, but not so pleased that the price of his improved locomotion was a very sore foot, so when the pain eventually subsided over the course of the next few holes and he started limping normally again he didn’t make a further attempt at the new swing for fear of getting the same result.

  10.30 a.m.

  A Hartley (14)

  N Critchlow (16)

  P Moss (17)

  The record at Sunnymere for ripping up one's card and taking no further part in the competition stood at one hole played. It was jointly held by James Miller Snr, and set in 1969 when it dawned on him as he was about to tee off at the second that in his haste to get to the course on time, on returning home from a holiday in Cornwall to take part in the Club Championship, he had inadvertently left his wife and children at a motorway services station south of Chesterfield. Miller shared the record with Edward ‘Bunty’ Bunting, who in 1963 took no further part in the July Monthly Medal after reaching the first green, and on discovering he had holed his two hundred and thirty yard approach shot had suffered a terminal heart attack brought on by the excitement of this achievement. These long-standing records were soon to be broken in terms of holes completed, though not in time taken, by Alan Hartley.

  Hartley was a man who liked to get on with the game with the minimum of fuss and delay, and didn't mind who knew it. In fact he took great pains to make sure everyone did know it, working on the principle that the greater the number of members who knew about his abhorrence of slow play the more likely it would be that those who chose to play golf at a more leisurely pace would avoid playing with him and risk incurring his wrath.

  Not that Hartley ever gave them much opportunity. In friendly fourballs he always ensured that he played with golfers who he knew would try to play the game in the manner he himself did, and avoided like the plague those who didn't. And in competitions, not wishing a slow player to put down his name alongside his own, he would always let the entry sheet fill up a little before adding his own name to the names of two golfers who played the game with reasonable dispatch. He wasn't always able to manage this and sometimes the only spaces available were alongside those golfers he knew to be slow players. On these occasions Hartley would choose not to enter the competition rather than play with them. Absolute anathema to Hartley was to be placed in the position whereby he was forced to let the group behind him play through. He would far rather chew his leg off.

  For the Captain's Day competition Hartley had put his name down alongside the names of Neil Critchlow and Paul Collis, two golfers he had played with on numerous occasions, both of whom liked to get on with the game. However at the last minute Collis had withdrawn when his wife had gone into labour – although why this should prevent him from playing his round of golf Hartley was at a loss to explain, as would the majority of the male members at Sunnymere - and his place had been taken by Peter Moss.

  Hartley had played with Moss once before and that single occasion had been enough to last him a lifetime, in fact it had seemed to him as if it had lasted a lifetime, and
if he had known about the change in advance he would certainly have withdrawn from the competition. However he had no inkling of the substitution until Moss arrived on the first tee all merry and bright at the appointed time, so had little alternative but to grin and bear it.

  He grinned and bore it for all of three minutes, during which time they had all teed off, set off up the fairway together, and Hartley had discovered that after a distance of less than fifty yards Moss had already dropped fifteen yards behind. He called to him in a voice that he hoped sounded long-suffering as well as business-like, so that perhaps its tone as well as his words might speed up his playing partner a little. “Do try to keep up would you, Peter.”

  “What's the rush?” said Moss. Then, two dawdling paces on, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, cupped a hand to his ear and said, “I say, isn't that a willow warbler?”

  The bird in question could have been a wandering albatross or a marsh harrier for all Hartley knew but he said, “Yes, can’t be anything else, I’d recognise one a mile off; now get a move on will you, there’s a good chap.” He waited for Moss to catch up, which Moss commenced to do only after a few more blissful moments listening to the cascading song of the willow warbler. While Hartley waited for Moss to catch up, keeping a beady eye on him in case he should stop again to identify a death watch beetle on the fairway or spot an Australian bush whippet in the rough, he remembered that in addition to Moss’s slow play there was something else he didn't like about the man. However he couldn’t for the moment recall what it was.

  *

  On the eighth hole Stock's ball had landed in the first of the two bunkers on the right hand side of the fairway. When he arrived at the hazard Stock found that his ball wasn't lying too badly and he was in no doubt that he would be able to get it out; however it was a little too close to the front of the bunker for comfort and he was aware that if he was a bit too greedy and tried to get too much distance on the stroke, and didn't make perfect contact, he could very well end up in the second of the bunkers, which was strategically situated twenty yards further up the fairway.

  Armitage and Grover, no strangers to bunkers themselves, and mindful of what would be going through Stock’s mind, waited respectfully whilst he made up his mind which type of bunker shot to play. If it had been up to Grover he wouldn’t have had any doubts about it; as the ball was sitting up quite nicely he would have taken a nine iron as opposed to a sand wedge, and rather than try to explode the ball out of the bunker would have tried to nip it cleanly off the top of the sand and settle for advancing it seventy yards or so up the fairway, with a bit of luck. If it had been Armitage's shot the decision would have been much more difficult to make, as not only would he have been faced with the choice of which type of shot to play, but having made that decision he would then have to choose which ball to hit, as due to the hallucinatory effect of the space cakes he could now see four balls, two with each of his two heads, two of the balls being a bright pink colour, the other two in a fetching shade of duck egg blue.

  Stock finally made up his mind, choosing to blast the ball out onto the middle of the fairway rather than go for distance, took his sand wedge from his bag and stepped with perfectly warranted trepidation into the bunker. There, having given the proposed recovery shot the preparation and concentration it demanded and taken up his stance, he was about to execute it when the helicopter, not for the first time that morning, passed low overhead across his eye line. Stock frowned at it, straightened up from his address position and waited for it to disappear from view. Then he said to the others, “I hope I’ve seen the last of that bloody chopper.”

  “As the actress said to the bishop,” said Armitage.

  Grover grimaced. “Oh for God's sake give it a rest will you Trevor. You've got dicks on the brain, you really have.”

  *

  By the time Hartley had drawn level with Moss's drive, some two hundred yards or so down the left side of the fairway, Moss himself had fallen about sixty yards behind, due to his having stopped twice, once to identify a rare grasshopper and once to admire a skein of wild geese high overhead, which he watched until it disappeared from view behind the tops of the trees bordering the third fairway. When he arrived at his ball Hartley was waiting for him impatiently with hands on hips. “You really will have to get a move on you know, Peter,” he admonished him. “If we’re not careful the threesome behind us will be calling for us to let them through.”

  “Oh I doubt that,” said Moss, and in a leisurely fashion began to weigh up the distance to the green in preparation for his approach shot.

  “Well I don't doubt it for one moment,” warned Hartley. “So just try to play with a little more urgency, would you.”

  Moss regarded Hartley for a moment or so, then reflected, “I think it was Walter Hagen who once remarked that when you're playing a round of golf you should take time to smell the flowers.”

  “What?” said Hartley.

  “You should take time to smell the flowers. When playing golf.”

  Hartley’s patience was finally exhausted. He glared at Moss. “Time to smell the flowers? Time to smell the flowers? You take enough time to grow the fucking flowers. Now get a move on for God’s sake. Unless of course you've got any more gems of wisdom up your sleeve?” he added, sarcastically.

  “Well there is Sir Walter Simpson's observation,” said Moss, and went on to quote the author of The Art of Golf. “‘Golf is not one of those occupations in which you soon learn your level. There is no shape nor size of the body, no awkwardness or ungainliness, which puts good golf beyond one's reach. There are good golfers with spectacles, with one eye, with one leg, even with one arm. None but the absolutely blind need despair. It is not the youthful tyro alone who has cause to hope. Beginners in the middle age have become great, and, more wonderful still, after years of patient duffering, there may be a rift in the clouds. Some pet vice which has been clung to as virtue may be abandoned, and the fifth-class player burst upon the world as a medal winner. In golf, whilst there is life there is hope.’”

  Hartley glared at Moss. “Have you quite finished?” he asked. A grave mistake brought about by his having failed to observe, the last time he’d tried it, that sarcasm was a ploy that was completely wasted on Moss.

  Moss thought for a moment then set off again. “‘Wherein do the charms of this game lie, that captivate youth, and retain their hold still far on in life? It is a fine, open-air, athletic exercise, not violent, but bringing into play nearly all the muscles in the body; while that exercise can be continued for hours’.... ”

  It was at this point that Hartley remembered the other thing he didn't like about Moss. The man was a walking anthology of golf. Not only that, he was liable to quote from his reservoir of quotations at the drop of a hat. Hartley quickly picked up the hat he had metaphorically dropped and said, “Yes, yes, all right, I get the point, now can we get on? Please?”

  However Moss was in full flight by now, and unstoppable. He continued, “....‘It is a game of skill, needing mind and thought and judgement, as well as a cunning hand. It is also a social game, where one may go out with one friend or with three, as the case may be, and enjoy mutual intercourse, mingled with an excitement which is very pleasing. It never palls or grows stale, as morning by morning the players appear at the teeing ground with as keen a relish as if they had not seen a club for a month. Nor is it only while the game lasts that its zest is felt. How the player loves to recall the strokes and other incidents of the match, so that it is often played over again next morning while still in bed’ - James Balfour, 1887.”

  “Fore!” came a loud cry from behind them. Hartley and Moss turned to see the distant figures on the first tee waving at them to get out of the way.

  “I think we'd better let them through,” said Moss. “I don't like to be pressed.”

  *

  Southfield was in bed enjoying a post-coital cigarette and contemplating a second carnal encounter with his lover Jessica in th
e not too distant future. They might do it stood up in the shower, he always enjoyed that, or then again he might let her be the dominant partner for a change, it had been a few weeks since he’d had a spanking, which is what usually happened as a prelude to the sex act whenever he let her take charge of proceedings. Or perhaps he’d simply settle for the good old-fashioned missionary position, a method he never tired off, as contrary to the saying ‘You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire’ he loved to look at Jessica’s lovely mantelpiece while he was poking her. Or maybe she could dress up as someone again? With perhaps a 69 for starters, although the last time he’d suggested one she’d turned him down as the time before that she’d taken umbrage when he remarked that the 69 they’d just had was very nice but not as good as the 69 he’d shot at Lindrick the previous week on a day out with the Probus Club. But he was sure he’d be able to talk her round. He sighed contentedly; what a wonderful dilemma to be in.

  Jessica was standing at the bedroom window looking out. Something now attracted her attention. She turned to Southfield and beckoned to him. “Quick, come here.”

  “I’d rather come here again,” said Southfield, not a man to turn down the chance to enrich a conversation with a double entendre whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  Jessica ignored the quip. “I can see him,” she said, nodding in the direction of the golf course beyond the window. “Walking up the fairway. Come and have a look.”

  It wasn't perhaps the last thing Southfield would have contemplated doing, but would have been well in the running. It was bad enough Jessica standing at the window on her own, never mind standing there with him looking over her shoulder. Even Jessica standing at the window on her own worried him as he had visions of her husband spotting her, wondering what on earth she was doing in the bedroom at this time of the morning, and rushing home to investigate; which would lead no doubt to his being on the wrong end of a thrashing. “Come away from the window,” he urged her. “Before the bugger sees you.”