On another footing, this brings up the remembrance of a golfer at our club, David Patrick, who was a Walker Cup player and got through into a final playoff to qualify for The Open. He, unfortunately, hit into the rough, away from everyone, and on addressing the ball, it seemingly moved just more than the allowed half diameter. Anyway, he called the foul on himself and incurred the penalty which prevented him qualifying. Wonderful. That is golf. That is life. But how rare does this kind of behaviour appear nowadays? I mean even politicians have been found out to be lying. Look at that Flynn bloke in America. The National Security Advisor for goodness sake. Poor show.
My brother told me of an amusing anecdote of how he was playing in a Club Medal one day with a very successful local businessman. Marking the chap’s card on the sixteenth tee, he asked what he’d scored to which the reply came ‘five’. Knowing this was wrong my brother intimated that he thought he had played six shots on the hole. To which the man unbelievably and immediately replied ‘net five’.
Give me strength!
Now, there is a remarkably successful man in America who is a very keen and seemingly most astute golfer. He is also that country’s president. Mr Donald Trump.
He has seemingly won nineteen club championships, held an amateur course record of 66 at a club called Mar-a-Lago and was listed on the USGA GHIN system at the end of 2016 with a 2.8 handicap. That is ostensibly very impressive. A course record, albeit an amateur one. Nineteen club championships! Wow. And playing off 2.8.
On further inspection and not to discredit these achievements, Donald turns out to own the golf courses at which he had the many victories and the personnel thereat have not been willing to elaborate on these august triumphs, for some reason. But well done anyway. I suppose you could say that these are home club victories in the truest sense, as he owns them all. The only club he is a member of which he doesn’t own is Winged Foot, and he has no record of any club championship wins there.
I have won two club championships. My junior at Mortonhall in 1979 as well as somehow carrying off the Mortonhall Casual Barmy Army Club Championship in the glorious summer of 2008 after a one-round decider, resulting from the committee’s inability to arrange a spring qualifying round and any resulting match play that year. A default win maybe. But a win. And an honest win. A reasonable 76 as far as I recall on a cold and wet October’s day.
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