Beaten but not down at Newbiggin

It's always a bad sign to get a text message when driving to a team match. I pulled over and read that Ricky Jamieson was going to be late. Don't worry. we have until 6.30pm to tee off. I arrived at Newbiggin on a warm and sunny evening. The threat of rain seemed to have gone, and we were ready for a tough match. The phone rang again. Ricky was not coming ... and with two regular team members not available I had no reserves. Frantic phone calls ... and voila ... Karl Mossom raced up from Parklands to fill the breach and we were a team of 6 again. But it was tough .... Newbiggin played the Penny brothers who are their Newcastle and District players with handicaps of +2. Their 6th player had a handicap of 2 .... a strong team on their own turf ... Matches at the start of the back nine were running to form, we were down in 5 and even in 1. The results started to come in ... Graeme Hewitt lost 5/4 but felt he played well, Chris Bowman lost 3/2, Craig Wilson lost 4/3. Ronnie lost 5/4 .... get the picture? The exception was Daniel Trotter playing at no.6 who had a good run of holes and won 4/3 to secure 2 points and ensure that we did not go home empty handed. Left out on the course with a growing crowd of onlookers was Karl playing at no.3 .... he was all square with three to go ... and his opponent was swearing, banging his club down, generally bad mannered. They halved the next ... then a par three ... Karl's opponent topped a chip shot and promptly broke his wedge over his knee ... the hole was halved ... down the 18th and both players had a putt for birdie. .... and both missed by a couple of inches ... and a half was secured and a point for the team. We had lost 9 - 3 but it was an ok result. Thanks to Karl for filling the gap ... it was appreciated by the team and me.