The fourth hole at Brecon...

While I'm not all that interested in golf any more, having given up one summer, around 1969, after an air-shot on the ninth hole at Tenterden Golf Course, occasionally a quick peek at the results of some of the big matches stirs an inert soul...

Just this morning, a piece in the press caught my eye! It was about the huge shots that Bryson DeChambeau manages from the tee - many of which reach a spot 325 yards away!

Now that is one heck of a drive and from here, would almost reach Will's Mother's (a colloquial term which requires no interest from anyone).

When I was about seventeen, I played a several rounds on the course at Brecon. As I was a bit slighter than I am now, I still used several clubs which were my dear Mother's, and the four iron was a delight on the first hole, up the slope, as I could make the green in one, usually four-putting to bugger the score, but I digress...

The second, back down the hill, and was a bit tricky, and the third was a tiny hole which you could do with a seven iron, but the fourth was a bastard! It went dead straight up around 300 yards, with no rough, just a bloody great field, the next hole came back the same way! Nobody liked these holes. (They're totally different nowadays, I just recall the sixties layout, so the pic is actually irrelevant).

A good chum had somehow acquired some clubs from somewhere, and had a driver with a wooden head the size of a small saucepan, but three times as heavy, The shaft was ultra-thin and whipped about four inches each way. He lent it to me on one day I was there, and I took off from the tee on the fourth with the sweetest drive I'd ever done. It went just over two hundred yards, and straight down the middle! (Even then, they had markers written in just English - this is Wales we're talking about).

Of course, after that, the approach shots were stupid, and the putting was even worse, but that drive will live with me forever, and if I ever get to play against Bryson DeChambeau, I'll remind him of this little fact, just as he's getting ready to belt that little ball...