Max and his best friend from childhood, together with Bear and Rob, played Pezula Championship Course nested above the Knysna Heads on the world famous and wildly picturesque Western Cape Garden Route.
MOTB (me, Mom On The Bag) berated Bear on the practice range for not taking 3 balls out and a general lack of strategic practice. MOTB shouted at Rob for unfocused putting – random practice holes with no clear vision or intention.
MOTB then went off duty and off on foot while the boys took the carts and set off on one of South Africa’s most beautiful courses. Characteristic of this course are massively deep bunkers. Rob went par on the first 2 holes before landing in one on hole 3 sending him into triple territory. Bear told him only after that a Sand Wedge is not the correct club out of a bunker like that – he would have played a Gap.
On the very next hole he found one once again which once again destroyed his score for the hole notwithstanding the Gap wedge and he walked off in tears. Max has no patience for crying on a golf course and told him he could sit a hole out, which knocked him back to reality and he almost shot a hole-in-one on the following hole, Par 3. With big, gaping pot bunkers guarding the greens on most holes the strategy going forward changed to longer approach shots and when appropriate attacking the green from the back rather than the front.
Rob has adopted a specific routine (yay!) which he follows religiously (yay!). On his chips on to the green, however, his 2 practice shots are often perfect and he tends to pull back just slightly on the real thing. He must remain consistent throughout………… And I catch myself harping on strategies and technicalities when in reality this is 4 boys, 2 slightly older than the others, playing golf together on a Sunday morning with waves crashing wildly on the cliffs below, blue mountains fading as far as the eye can see, and a friendly skins competition between young guns and old mates.
African sky blue, your children wait for the dawn
African sky blue, soon a new day will be born
African sky blue
African sky blue, will you bless my life? *
MOTB focusing on the African brush, smells and abundant birdlife worked out well for the boys (Rob put 90 on the card, playing solidly despite his struggles in the sand on the front, and Bear finished a beautiful 2 over Par notwithstanding a quadruple meltdown on Hole 15) and wonderfully for her Soul.
- African Sky Blue by Johnny Clegg.