Golf and other things

When I was growing up I was fortunate enough to live next door to a golf club. I started playing when I was about nine and by the time I was sixteen I had a single figure handicap. A few bad injurys playing Rugby and Football meant that I gave up for a few years. I never really got back into golf until my Daughter was born and I gave up Rugby. Never really had the time though to practice and after a couple of years I drifted away from it.

A lot of the boys who I used to play with have just started back so I took the plunge this morning and joined a club. The course is pretty flat but quite tight. Perfect for an old twat like me. The last eleven holes I managed to go round with four pars, six bogeys and a double bogey. Unfortunately, the first seven holes saw me hack and thrash about fifty shots. Shot a 94 and three putted ten holes. Shocking.

My best round of golf was in France. I was on holiday and got talking to a guy in the hotel bar who told me about this course he had found. We went there the next evening and hired some clubs. Amazingly, mine were Calloways. After bogeying the first I had ten pars on the spin and then eagled a par five when I holed out from about 120 yards. Another two pars and a birdie and I'm two under after fourteen. On the fifteenth this guy pushes his ball into a line of bushes which ran parallel with the next hole. They ran about 100 yards down the fairway. As we were looking for his ball we spot about ten within a five yard radius. We ended up on our hands and knees picking up all these balls. On the next hole he does exactly the same in almost the same position. We're crouching by these bushes looking for his ball when something catches my eye. Three yards away from me, about five yards from where we had been scrambling about on our hands and knees picking up balls was this big, fuck off angry snake. It must have been about ten foot long and it raised itself up like a cobra, looking directly at me with a glint in its eye which said I'm going to fuck you up. I shat myself.

I've always been shit scared of snakes and this was the meanest fucker I've ever seen. The guy I'm playing with spots me standing there and says something which my brain couldn't register. All I could do was stand frozen to the spot stammering snake, snake, snake. Finaly he walks up to me and sees what I'm looking at. He then registers that I'm bricking it and grabs me by the shoulder and walks me backwards. I kept walking backwards all the way to the clubhouse. Two fucking under after fourteen and I suffer a nervous breakdown because of a fucking snake.

Anyhow, planning on getting an handicap and playing a bit this Summer. Hopefully will enter a few comps as well. Beats sitting in front of the computer playing poker all day, I hope.

Off out to watch the Rugby and then Arsenal v Chelsea. Should be a decent match. Have had a little bet on the following, Woves, Swansea Wycombe, Atletico, Barca and Empoli. £26 returns £300.

Later.