Slow play is nothing to chuckle about, ever!

By Martin Johnson 

Prior to playing in a recent midweek club competition, I checked the bag before teeing off  to make sure I had everything I needed. Balls, tees, drink, chocolate bar… all there, I thought, until two and a quarter hours later when I realised I’d forgotten several essential items. Namely pyjamas, toothbrush, 900-page novel, torch and, last but not least, an old fashioned cut-throat razor blade – not so much for shaving, as drawing slowly across the jugular.

When you’ve been on the course for the thick end of two and a half hours and arrive at the par-three ninth to find there is one group on the green and two more waiting on the tee (this was groups of three not four, for heaven’s sake), there are only two realistic options. You either reach for your mobile phone and book a flight to Zurich for an appointment with Dignitas or you mutter something along the lines of “b****r this for a game of soldiers” and head for the bar.

Assisted suicide was certainly a tempting option, but I plumped for the latter on account of not wanting to check out while I still had some credit left on my bar card. And no sooner had I raised a comforting pint to my lips than the tournament organiser popped his head round the door to suggest that in abandoning the competition, the crime of jolly poor show had been committed.

Not all of my reply is fit for reproduction here, but the gist of it was that the Great Architect would eventually be calling time on my stay on Earth, and that I had no wish to use up large chunks of it forming the opinion that if MI5 were looking for new techniques for interrogating captured spies, then making them play in a midweek medal would pretty quickly have them spilling the beans.

Especially if it’s a seniors’ competition. If your own club is the same as mine, 90 per cent of slow play is caused by people with free bus passes in their pockets, and winter fuel allowances in their bank accounts. They never look behind them for a start, not unless a Titleist 2 comes whizzing past their ear at 200mph (and, believe me, I’ve thought about it) and in the time it takes them to travel from a tee box to where their drive has finished, which can be anything up to 150 yards, another square mile of polar ice cap will have melted. Quite apart from the length of time it takes, is there any form of golf more boring than a medal? From now on I’ll play the number of comps required for handicap purposes (stableford only) and otherwise stick to social golf, with various tweaks and variations in order to keep it interesting.

Last week, we touched upon the drama to be had from reverse mulligans in matchplay, and the evil delight you can take from watching your opponent drill a three iron into the wind and over a lake to a foot from the flag, and require him, or her, to do it again. So let’s look at one or two more ways of spicing up the old Sunday morning hack around.

The only time I’ve ever been kissed by a male partner on a golf course (only on the cheek I’m pleased to say) was during a game of Las Vegas. It’s a dangerous form of fourball strokeplay, and it happened when – one of our opponents having already secured a birdie – I holed a ten-footer for a par. So why would my partner get so excited about losing the hole with a par? Well, in Las Vegas the difference between losing a hole with a par and losing a hole with a bogey can be quite expensive, as I shall now explain.

Firstly, you decide upon a base unit of money, let’s say 2p, and off you go down the first. Both you and your partner make a par four, and your opponents both make fives. Your two fours go together to make 44, and their two fives ditto to make 55. A difference of 11, times 2p, which puts you 22p ahead going to the second tee. Can you smell the danger now? It gets worse!

If one of you makes par or better, that is the first number. But if neither of you makes par, the higher score goes first. So the reason I got the kiss was that my partner had topped and duffed his way to a nine, leaving me with that ten-footer for a score of either 49, if I holed it, or 95 if I missed. From which was to be subtracted, with our opponents having made a four and a five, 45. Ergo, we either lost four units or 50. Eight pence or a whole quid.

My favourite game, though, is Chuckles, so named because the greater your opponent’s misfortune, the louder it makes you laugh. Meaning that the only problem with Chuckles, especially when your opponent is making his fifth attempt to remove his ball from a bunker, is having to stuff a handerchief in your mouth to keep the noise down and maintain etiquette. Basically a chuckle is a ‘unit’ of money and you win or lose them for just about everything you can think of – or invent. A twoball is best, so let’s imagine it’s you and me on the first tee and you fire one out of bounds. Two chuckles for me.  Then I hit the longest drive (has to be on the fairway). Another for me.

I hit the green with my second shot, giving me another chuckle for green in regulation (if we’d both been on, the chuckle is the closer to the hole). But then I three putt, giving a chuckle to you. You end up with a plucky six with your second ball, but even with a three putt my five gives me the win and another chuckle. Plus another chuckle for retaining the honour. So the hole ends with me five up. Or, with a 2p unit, 10p up.

On to the second, a par-three, and I dump my tee shot in a bunker. A chuckle to you. I get up and down. A chuckle to me. You make birdie. A chuckle to you. Off to the third. You make eagle. Two chuckles to you. I have an airshot. A chuckle to you. Your trousers fall down, three chuckles to me (you can make up your own chuckles for anything you like, really). And at a time when golf is wondering how to reverse the player drain, the answer is obvious. Scrap all medals, and replace them with the Midweek Monthly Chuckl

Tagged Martin Johnson