When Golf was fun.
We kicked off the GCA get together last week with a round on Old Musselburgh, played with hickories, authentic balls, sand tees and STYMIES. Our host for the day was the remarkable Alfie Ward who rebuilt his own course and you can read more about his exploits here
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/interviewward.html .
Alfie welcomed us (hopefully someone else can post that picture as I forgot to take one) and just said he hoped we’d have enjoy ourselves.
This is Jason Fiorita, hitting his first ever shot in Scotland, using a Hickory club, a 1920’s style wound ball and a sand tee.(Welcome Jason at time of writing our newest member.)
Andrew Mitchell this is his tee shot on the 183 yard 5th.
Got it to about 5 feet.
Some observations.
To the best of my knowledge no one bothered with the scorecard, we were just out there enjoying the sport.
With the hickories both the wound ball and the gutta perch’s flew low but ran so a reasonable distance could be attained. On the green the wound ball sprang off the putter face, whilst the gutta percha had a lovely click but felt comparatively dead.
Playing Musselburgh like this was perfect. Despite a wet winter in late March the course had plenty of run in it and the greens were in surprisingly good shape. With an overall length of 2874 yards (the longest hole at 479 and shortest 146) it’s the perfect course for this. It also reminds you that golf can be played at a good pace. The four ball in front of us, all had unique & ‘unorthodox’ actins and none of them could get it within a short pitch of the first green partly because none bothered with even a practice swing, yet they informed us they played 5 times a week and 9 holes took 70 minutes.
This is the 6th green. Sir Peter Allen said Park copied this at the “13th (now the 3RD)” at Huntercombe and the 8th at Worplesdon.
Worplesdon 8G
Alfie and his son Ross milled around and encouraged us to try both balls and to have fun. A marvellous morning and a pleasure to meet you again Sir, thanks Alfie.
The group
Left to Right
Michael Christiansen, Demi Moore, Matt Sullivan, James Bennett, Andrew Mitchell, Jason Fiorita, David Gower, Mike ‘Clooney’ Cirba, Alfie Ward, Philip Gawith.
It was great fun meeting you all and proof yet again that once you get a bunch of GCA enthusiasts together on a golf course you are going to have fun.