JOIN USOn course, to a tee
The weekend round for any golfer is like an elixir, the most-looked-forward-to moment. And my four-ball is not an exception. Unfortunately, these were cruelly snatched away by the impact of coronavirus. The news of re-opening of golf courses was akin to the excitement created by the opening of liquor shops. Numerous Zoom calls were made between us to decide the day, venue, time, strokes allowed etc. However, the social distancing restrictions allowed only a maximum of three players in a group and that too, for only nine holes. Luckily all of us were adults under 60 years of age, else we would have had to make do with just listening to the stories from the golf course.
One of us had to sacrifice his place. I offered to sit out. However, the brotherhood in us prevented me from being a martyr. So, one more Zoom call was made to decide the casualty through luck of the draw.
Lo and behold! The effects of coronavirus (not the beer) began to show the moment we met at the parking lot. After having not seen each other physically for over two months, the urge to hug your buddies came naturally, but we had to resort to elbowing each other and mocked a hug.
The waiting time of more than 15 minutes gave us the opportunity to check our supplies — golf balls, sanitisers, extra masks, water, fruits etc., before we hopped to the hallowed spot on the first tee. There was a weird feeling as the regular camaraderie, which is usually seen amongst our “most jovial four-ball”— a title crowned on the group by our caddie — seemed totally absent, and so were the caddies themselves.
Each one of us looked solemn. The focus, now, was more on how to avoid breaking any rules/conditions of the SOPs, rather than how to avoid the roughs and water. I could not sleep well the previous night, mentally visualising my shots and to try and play to my handicap of 18. However, the new playing conditions, added to the rust, showed in my results right from the first shot which never rose above the ground and travelled no more than 100 yards, leaving me with almost the same distance just to make it to the fairway.
Thanks to the one-metre circle drawn around the hole where you can pick up the ball if it lands inside it, I made a forgettable quadruple bogey on the par-4 opener. Going by my form, I guess I would have missed that three-footer too! Determined to improve my performance after the dismal start, I battled on but without much success. The best I could manage was a double on our finishing par-5 ninth, which in itself was eventful. I pulled my drive, but it ricocheted off the tree onto the fairway. But now, I was in trouble. There was no rough, no water and no sand, all of which I had gotten used to in the first eight holes. So I decided to use the safest club, the 7-iron. However, the magic club was missing from my bag. I then remembered I had left it back on the seventh hole while playing my fourth shot. Facing a tricky 140-yarder, I had carried both the 7 and 8-irons, finally relying on the latter, and, in celebration of a good shot, forgot the club behind. This is where I missed my caddie, Vikram, the most. Had he been there, I could have saved at least six golf balls out of eight that I lost during the round, not to mention the strokes and the agony of forgetting my clubs.
Coming back to the finishing hole, I nailed a 20-footer left-to-right curler. My playing partner did even better, chipping in for a birdie. Thanks to the proximity clause of the SOP, we had to
celebrate it with high-fives in the air. Having lost track of the number of shots we played, (no scorecards available), the winner was decided on the number of balls lost. I came a close third! The yardage in the card for nine holes was 3,270 yards, but I must have walked more than 4,500 yards. Wish we had a Covid ‘stroke allowance’ on the lines of moratoriums on loans announced by banks. The post-round regaling session — where bets are settled, beers are guzzled and heroics on the course recounted — was sorely and surely missed as was the shower that takes away all your weariness.
We returned home thinking, was it worth playing without the usual charm of weekend golf? Well, the fantastic putt and the chip-in birdie answered our question to a certain extent.