If you split your game into four parts – driving, irons, chipping and putting – why is it that on a typical day only two of them will work?

Any two, mind…..could be driving and putting, irons and chipping……but rarely more than two. But now and again, a third one kicks in temporarily. And once every five years or so, all four appear for one of those incredibly rare red-letter days that you tell your wife, kids and grand kids all about (even if they’re not interested).

That is certainly the case for me. My last real red-letter day was a ridiculous 48 points playing off 16 in a club honours board comp – but that was eleven years ago. There has been the odd 40+ since then, but in harsh reality just to get into the buffer zone and avoid the dreaded 0.1 is very acceptable these days.

And another thing that seems to blight us mid-handicappers – why oh why do we have one good nine and then fall away to what our little golfing group know as a “BNC” – a Back Nine Collapse?

Invariably a bad nine follows a good one, or in some miraculous cases a good nine follows a bad one. Is it fatigue? Is it choking when getting excited about the prospect of a good card or a win? Or is it a case of the luck just not being able to hang on in there with us?

There’s a great golfing adage I’ve read on the internet, one of the golden rules that we have come to know and love more than life itself – a (hard-fought and well-earned) birdie will inevitably be followed by a (pathetic self-inflicted four-stab or slice OOB) double bogey or worse. How *&%$* true that is!

I will endeavour to update this blog with a regular report on my weekly fourball. Maybe people will read it, possibly (or probably!) they won’t. But hopefully those that do will empathise with what they will undoubtedly read….the heartbreak of the BNC, the frustration of the missed two foot putts, the mass of head-filling swing thoughts that resemble a pre-flight check on a Boeing 747.

More to follow! A club comp at the weekend, then the next weekend a small group of us playing away at four Cornwall courses which we’re really looking forward to – full of hope as always.