FanStory.com - Saving Mr. Calvin - Chapter 28Bby Jim Wile

The morning matches were completed in plenty of time to have lunch before the afternoon matches began, and it is traditional for the hosting team to provide the meal. Volunteers from the town prepared a glorious spread of a variety of dishes from meat pies to vegetable concoctions to soups and stews of all kinds. There was even a roasted pig that someone had begun roasting at 3:00 AM. We had to avoid the temptation to stuff ourselves, lest we be sluggish for the afternoon matches. There were plenty of leftovers that were later sold to the crowd until they ran out.

When 1:00 rolled around, Hamish announced the first of the Best-of-4 matches, which happened to be Putt, Aggie, Cat, and me, Kirk. We called ourselves the PACK team for our initials. Before teeing off, Hamish explained the format to the crowd.

“Ladies and gen’lmen, I’m gonna ‘nounce to you how this format be a’workin’.“ It was obvious from the start that Hamish had been imbibing all morning. “All four players be hittin’ their own balls, then they all hit the bes’ one next and—”

“You mean all four aim at the same ball and try to see who hits it first?” shouted some joker from the crowd.

“Naw, ya ninny. They take turns at it! Then they do it all o’er again on ta nex one until the ball be holed.”

“Ya mean one of ‘em hits it, then they go and fetch it back so the next one can hit it, fetch it again and so on?” asked the same joker who was clearly trying to confuse poor Hamish.

Hamish stood there nonplussed as he tried to make sense of that question. The crowd was tittering their delight at this exchange, so I thought I’d better step in or we’d never get going.

I shouted to the crowd, “I think everyone gets the picture or they will figure it out as we go, so I think we will just begin. Our first player to hit will be Aggie Lang.”

She stepped onto the tee box and, without wasting any time, uncorked a beautiful drive to much applause from the crowd. It was a terrific start. We planned to have the women hit first on the drives because they could be relied on to put a good one out there, and then Putt and I could really try to smash one, knowing that even if it went wild, there would be a safe one to play next. That proved to be an important strategy to use for all shots, not just the drives—get a good first shot, then the remaining players can take risks, which you would not ordinarily take if playing just your own ball, to improve upon it.

Hamish took over then and announced each of the rest of us, and we all stepped up and hit quickly with no wasted time. Then it was time for the Snog team to be introduced and take their starting shots.

Their first player stood on the tee box, gazing down the hole. He bent down and pulled a few blades of grass and tossed them in the air to test the direction of the wind. After taking two practice swings then standing behind his ball to aim it, he finally took his stance beside the ball, constantly moving his feet slightly while he waggled the club about 12 times. During this tedious process, we heard a number of snores coming from the crowd, and one wit said out loud to his friend, “I think I’ll take a nap. Wake me when he hits, wouldja?”

This caused the player to step away from his ball and look angrily at the man, before stepping back in and repeating the process of waggling and shifting his feet. The Foos in the crowd groaned. Finally, the man was ready and hit just a mediocre drive into the rough on the right. This interminable process was then followed by each of the Snog team members until finally everyone had hit, and we headed down the fairway for our second shots.

The PACK team was prepared for this. We decided ahead of time that rather than put ourselves through the torture of watching all four Snogs prepare to and then hit their shots, we would amuse ourselves with a number of activities instead. Putt was a fair magician and had a few tricks to show us. We would gather in a circle, well away from the Snogs’ current shot, so as not to distract them, and watch Putt do his magic tricks. At other times I would juggle gowf balls and try to teach the others to juggle. Cat would ask us riddles, and Aggie told us jokes. She had learned many in her role as innkeeper and barmaid. These tactics did wonders in keeping us from getting annoyed at the Snogs for their incredibly slow play and helped us maintain a stress-free mood. I had encouraged our other group of four to do the same in their match.

The crowd, however, had not figured out how to do this, but resorted to taunts instead. There were some good ones, but there were two that stood out. One old gaffer said to a Snog player when he was taking even longer than usual, “C’mon, laddie. You’re slower than me bowels this mornin’.”

The one I liked best was from another cheeky old fellow who said, “You’d better hit, young man, before the grass grows up and swallows yer ball.”

The Snogs bore it well enough, but it didn’t seem to have much impact on their pace of play. At least we didn’t let their pace get to us.

Where we really excelled in the match was on the greens. We had Putt hit last on the greens because he was the best holer of the ball. On longish shots of perhaps 15 or 20 feet, it often came down to him hitting fourth to try to hole the ball after the three of us had missed. By this time, he had a good read on the break. Putt also loved the noise from the crowd and encouraged them to make noise while it was his turn. The crowd would begin a slow chant of “Putney… Putney… Putt.. Putt.. Putt..Putt. Putt. Putt,” faster and faster, ending with “Ppptppptppppttptttptptptptppptptp.” More often than not, he would sink the shot to wild applause and cheering.

People would often say, “Did you see that Putt? He never misses!” and after a while, they began calling the shot on the green a “putt” and the action of stroking the ball toward or into the hole, “putting.”

He ended up sinking enough of these putts that we easily won the match 4-and-3 on the 9th hole.

Our other foursome did not fare as well and lost their match on the last hole when all four failed to hole a 12-foot putt to tie the match. It was a heartbreaking loss, but we were still where we hoped to be by this point in the matches with a total score of four points for each team. Today was done, and we would resume with the individual matches tomorrow at noon following church in the morning.