Back To Balcomie

I've always called the Balcomie the Old Course's Mini-Me, so fun to play it right after the old girl.  Of course, everything regresses to the mean, which can be downright mean.  Though it took a bit before my own regression kicked in, but when it did it had a bite to it.

The first amusing bit is that the first time I turned on my camera, it powered up but immediately shut down, displaying a message that said, "Battery Exhausted."  Big deal, I thought, who isn't by this point in the trip....

After finishing late on the Old on Saturday, Sunday was a day we could have let go for golf, if not for a fairly bad Monday weather forecast.  So we ventured out, Theresa actually leaving her book in the car, lest I choose to soldier on solo.

I'll just post some images I grabbed on my phone, first the bride rolling her rock on the second green:

And this to complement a photo from last week:

The green behind Theresa is the seventh.  I had posted a photo of her playing from the top of the hill, but the camera obscured the downhill aspect.  This isn't all that much better, but you can get the sense of it, plus it also shows the berm that can get in one's way.

And the obligatory phot of the green on Hell's Hole:

The cows must be lying down, and we all know what that means...

And this first effort to photograph one of the ladies playing their second on the diabolic 13th.  We've covered that hole in prior years, but there's really no way for the ladies to play it (it's a great but brutal one-shotter for the men).

My strong play from the prior day continued, at least until it didn't.  The high point was playing Nos. 7-9 in -3, courtesy of a chip-in eagle on the ninth off a drive maybe 15 yards short of the green.  The amusing bit, though, was that when my pact with the devil lapse, it was abrupt and severe, finding myself suddenly unable to put the clubface on the ball.

Of far great import, Elsie and John arrived late afternoon, and we fired up the BBQ.  Of course, we're still in Scotland, so a soft rain started, the good news being that I finally got a payoff for lugging my waterproofs to Scotland (as if anyone has ever complained about not needing their rain gear);

We had my fave, but Elsie thoughtfully also made a sticky toffee pudding for Theresa:

John, in reading the blog, had noticed the absence of references to matches, and had assumed that meant that Employee No. 2 was having her way with me.  On the contrary, we just hadn't felt competitive.  We started one match, but the first four holes went in one direction (don't assume which), and we both quickly lost interest.  But the trash talk began over dinner Sunday, as John has a particular affinity for the Balcomie, where he has played quite well in the past.

But stop me if you've heard this one before, it so ensued (a little inside joke there, because "ensue" was the Wordl of the day, and we compare Wordl results with Elsie) that a Scottish weather forecast was faulty.  As we arose Monday, we faced a peak rain probability of 30% in the 11:00 hourly block, which meant we were a resounding go.

Given the intensity of the smack, I imposed on one of the gents in the group behind us to take a photo of the fourball while we were still on speaking terms.

I caught this of Theresa trundling down the first fairway with her trolley, which ties to that photo of the thirteenth above.  To her right is the wall of fescue that the tee shot needs to carry on No. 13, which shows in the course guide as a 139 yard carry (I think it's more like 115-120, but is substantially higher than the two dimensional camera lens can convey), and you'll not find many balls in that long hay.

It was a day of strong play all around, this being Johns approach to the second:

As you might have discerned, that camera was fully functional after its day off.  Inexplicable that it wouldn't have been charged, for the simple reason that it had been left connected overnight after off-loading all the Old Course photos.

I had been struggling to capture the golf ball leaving the clubface earlier in the trip, but I seem to have it working with John at least (this is his tee shot on the Par-3 third):

The great thing about the Balcomie is that even the throwaway photos are eye candy:

And how about this far better shot of Theresa playing up to the thirteenth green.  Typically they are so blind on the shot that I go up top first and give her the line.

With John and I already on the green on the 14th, Theresa put hers well inside us:

Not a bad spot, eh?  Not so shabby on the green as well:

As you can tell from the selection of photos, we had a day of variable skies, some heavy cloud cover giving way to sunshine (I even put my sunglasses on a couple of times), all the more enjoyable for that dire weather forecast.  The golf was actually quite good, with the ladies perhaps taking a bit too long to get it going.

We've blogged the competitive differences between a Stableford and match play over the years.  While strongly preferring the latter, I can't deny that for mixed groups (and it gets pretty mixed on the Balcomie, given that the ladies play a Par 72 golf course, whereas John and I were on the yellows, Par 67) and widely varying handicaps, the Stableford solves all the inherent problems.  John and Elsie just instinctively know how to score a Stableford, so we let them handle the paperwork, though amusingly there were many corrections as they went hole-by-hole in the bar overlooking the North Sea.  Given the large number of irregularities, perhaps a forensic accountant was required, but I'll not protest the protest the results in the interest of U.S. - Scottish relations.

Fact is that I played well, though I certainly could have gotten more assistance from the flat stick (greens were quite shaggy and all four of use were leaving them short).  I drove the fifteenth green, one of the short Par-4's, and after my two-putt birdie John and I were likely tied.  Amusingly, I thought that was my second birdie of the day, but that situation in the scoring tent revealed that the 11th hole is actually a Par-4 from the yellow tees (it's a fiver from the longer whites), so no joy for your humble blogger.  And while I didn't hit a poor shot over those last three challenging holes, I also didn't convert any of those fine shots into actual pars.

I really knew it was tough climb when I heard John score four points on a hole, probably by making a natural par on a hole where he got two strokes.  By way of comparison, my only four-pointer this trip likely was the chip-in eagle noted above.  I ended the day with 36 points, a magic number in Stablefordistan, indicating that you've shot your handicap exactly, something we don't do too often (it used to be 25% of the time, but it's likely even less with the latest changes to the handicap system). 

But John got me by two, which is strong play indeed.  He was in virtually every hole, failing to score (meaning he made a net double or worse) only on the twelfth hole, where he lost a ball in the identical spot where I lost my Old Course ball the previous day.  He matched my bogeys on those final holes, and scored appropriately better, which was the margin of victory.

We had a low key dinner at our house, which features this lovely dining area (this photo is actually from Saturday night):

Amusingly, a soft rain started as we were winding the meal down, but it was so warm that no one wanted to go indoors.  So we just moved our chairs under the eave:

Tuesday is a much-needed day off from golf, in which we'll walk through the Auld Grey Toon, pay our respects to Old and Young Tom, and otherwise amuse ourselves on what promises to be a fine day.