50 Years Young

David hosted a party on Saturday night, a round of golf Monday morning, comedy and curry on Monday night and a quiet lunch out with the wife on Tuesday to celebrate his half century. According to our actuarial expert, Mike, if you are under the age of 50, there is a 90% chance of you reaching your 100th birthday. Given the fact that David was told this on his last evening in his forties, this obviously bodes well.

So, to the golf, and clearly David is entering a purple patch. For a long time, the big quiet man has struggled to bring his scores down to two figures. It took quite a while to drop below a round of 110. And then, the drives got longer and the scoring improved dramatically. 108 in September, 100 in December and now 95. He claims he is only playing about once per quarter but there was a suggestion that such an improvement cannot be put down to age alone. Richard has initiated an investigation and will be contacting all the Cornwall based driving ranges and teaching professionals over the coming weeks.

So, on a foggy spring morning three of the scheduled four stood on the first tee at Tiverton (Kevin had dropped out to engage n a little nursing). After nine holes, Richard too had dropped by the wayside, leaving the two Titans - Mike and David - to battle it out over the final nine holes.

As usual, the back nine was played first and the front nine second. Mike shot 44 over the first nine holes to David's 51. The last nine holes saw a dramatic turnround with David shooting a gross 44 to Mike's 43. They were all square after eight of those nine. Final gross scores: Mike 87, David 95.

The talk that evening at the Comedy Club was how mny stableford points David had scored and how much his handicap would drop. It is at this point I can reveal that David was, in fact, playing off a handicap that was three below his official D.O.G.S. handicap of 26. The graphologists have inspected the scorecard and deteremined that it is clearly Mike's writing suggesting an attempted subterfuge. Hard luck. It failed.

Having recalculated the point scores, it can now be revealed that the true scores were Mike 33 points, David 39 points. New handicaps are Mike unchanged at 12.9, David slashed from 25.5 to 22.5.

The only questions that remain are: has David peaked too early for the Spring Masters? will Richard's injury present an adequate excuse for any disappointment at the Masters? will Mike's subterfuge be allowed to go unchallenged?

Only time will tell ...