Putting Edge

From the Echo, first published Thursday 16th Oct 2003.

Alright, so whose bright idea was this then?

"Let's all enter the Great Britain Mini-Golf Open."

"It'll be great."

"We might do well."

Yeah, brilliant...

It's about 8pm on the Friday night before the Great Britain Mini-Golf Open in Hastings and we've found the owner of a B&B which has managed to accommodate a fair whack of the participants.

He's a jolly fellow and regales us with a funny story about mini-golf. We chortle.

We are five in number. You might remember us from such publications as your Daily Echo: Steve Court, newspaper sales; Lyndon Hogg, sub-editor; Rolf Niven, sub-editor; Chris Parnell, sub-editor; and Steve Wilson, feature writer.

We, plus a few others who couldn't make the trip, have been waving putters about with reckless abandon on the Pleasure Gardens and Sandbanks crazy golf "courses" over the past few months. Our skill levels vary greatly.

We play for a plastic trophy each time, and it has become something of a sad obsession among us all. So sad that when the possibility of entering the British Open was mentioned, a few of us were pretty darn excited.

So we're in Hastings, as I say, on the Friday before the weekend event...

Up pulls a people-carrier - the type you see dog owners trundle about in with massive stickers obscuring their back window advertising their chosen breed to other drivers like we all give a damn.

Out pops a plain-looking woman, a heavy-set unshaven man wobbling on crutches and a little girl.

"Here's the Czech representative," our host informs us.

Well he's not looking like much. His balance is clearly hampered by the large drumstick in plaster, though his dexterity with crutches is surprisingly impressive. This is looking easy, we can take him.

"She's only eight, you know."

What?

The little girl? The little girl who - wait, yes, appears to be holding a miniature putter and a little bag of balls.

Well this is great, we're going to be thrashed by a two-foot-tall Czech child prodigy, and if by some alarming effort we beat her, surely her father will batter us with his crutches.

"Pub, lads?"

"Pub."

For those who take the sport seriously, and they well outnumber those who don't this weekend, Thursday and Friday have been allocated practice days. We can wander up and tap about to our hearts' content.

Well it's 11.40pm, the competition starts tomorrow, we're all in the pub and we haven't seen the course yet.

Ding ding! Last orders, so it's time to check out the course by the hazy light of the nearby footpath lights.

This shabby practice serves us well enough to realise the new golf balls we brought are pretty nigh on useless, as each one bounces straight back out of the hole like round, dimpled frogs.

Well, we can't do much 'til the morning anyway.

Breakfast at 8am served up a treat in the form of the Italian team. Their names, according to the rear of their shirts, are Carlo, Marco and Dibe. They must be good, they have a uniform. There are a few others who don't, but they look like the kind of people who get nosebleeds at the very mention of the word "exercise".

The course in daylight is a very different kettle of English breakfast.

Little hills explain why our balls were seemingly defying the laws of physics the previous night. And speaking of balls, what the blazes are those things?

Several practising mini-golfers are smacking little rubber things about. They're not golf balls by any means, but rather like little solid squash balls.

We all stare at our rather pathetic weathered golf balls we borrowed from the hut. Our equipment is inadequate, it seems.

Suddenly, as if the patron saint of mini-golf had answered our collective whimper, an old bearded man made an announcement: "If anyone would like to purchase special mini-golf balls, please see the Austrian gentleman by the hut."

If joy could power a spacecraft, we'd have flown to the Crab Nebula and visited several neighbouring features of that region.

"Zo wod tybe wud yu lyge?"

What type? Oh I don't know, how about a round one?

It seems you can get different densities to suit different holes. This sport is getting sadder by the second.

Four of us opt for the middle one, not too bouncy, not too "dead". It's also a very unattractive shade of brown. Nice.

"Seven pounds please."

I'm sorry, ha ha, I thought you said seven pounds for a measly blob of rubber.

Oh so that is what you said. Okay.

Like a bunch of saps, we pay him 28 pounds without complaint. Well we don't want to appear novices, now do we? Only later would other "experienced" mini-golfers laugh in our faces about how much we paid for our Norbert Wagners. And they're not even very good, apparently, the shyster.

Still, we found them better than our massive golf balls, and if we'd paid seven pounds for them, by jingo we were gonna use 'em!

Separated into groups of four and starting on different holes, we kick off round one. I've been grouped with Olivia Prokopova, the eight-year-old Michael Schumacher of golf. Great.

I needn't have worried. While I was horribly average she was worse, and I trounce her convincingly by a single shot. Get in!

Round one:

Steve Court 46

Lyndon Hogg 43

Rolf Niven 50

Chris Parnell 49

Steve Wilson 45

Round two sensibly groups those with similar scores and therefore abilities. Finally among normal people, we can have a laugh at those who really should take up a proper sport. One with running or even moving, for Ron's sake! The announcement is also made that the predicted cut-off for the next round is 88. Well that's no good, we hadn't planned to make the cut and had booked accommoda-tion for only one night. I was on course, and so was Steve Wilson.

But early holes in the second round seemed to put paid to my chances anyway as I hashed things up complet-ely, so I relaxed.

It's during this round that an alarming recurrence shakes me to my very soul. The people who live-breathe-eat-sleep-sweat mini-golf are high-fiving each other after holes-in-one. High-fiving.

"YEERRRRRRRSSSS!!!!!"

Smack!

Smack!

Smack!

Oh good lord, please tell me this is some horrible, horrible nightmare.

"GAAAAARAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!"

Smack!

Smack!

Smack!

The fact that grown men feel it nec-essary to indulge in this sort of despicable carry-on makes me feel quite ill. Shake his hand, give him a hug, a big sloppy kiss - I don't care. Anything's better than a [shudder] high-five.

"Blimey Lyndon, you've had a good last few holes."

Eh? Let me see that. Two, two, two, two... oh hell.

Forty-four, making a total of 87. I've made the cut

Round two:

Steve Court 48

Lyndon Hogg 44

Rolf Niven 44

Chris Parnell 48

Steve Wilson 46

Well, we've all got to go back to Bournemouth anyway. We arrived in two cars and most have made Sunday arrangements. So it's back to the 'mouth and up again at 5am for the trip back to Hastings (yawn) and two more rounds.

The ratio of saddos to normal people has shot up as the field is hacked by two thirds for the final day. Thankfully my group is again relatively normal, and I'm nothing if not consistent.

Round three:

Lyndon Hogg 44

Our young Czech has bounced (ho ho!) back from her appalling first-round 44 to card 38, 37 and a fine 35 for the fourth. Somewhere there are a couple of crutches waving about in delight. But she wasn't the only one to save the best for last as yours truly banged about his small brown Norbert Wagner like man semi-interested in what he was doing.

Round four:

Lyndon Hogg 37

A quite astonishing round which consisted of no fewer than two holes in one. But quite pathetic when compared with Tim Davies - a man who's been around his fair share of courses - breaking the course record with a 28, including nine holes in one.

I make that around 30 high-fives.

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