AT LAST!!

Our Golf Correspondent reports..

The par 3 hole on the challenging Princes Course at Hever Castle is the one that bears the title of `stroke index 1.` And not surprising, for it is almost all water. The tee, set with a slight elevation, is placed about 20 yards from the edge of a daunting lake which leads to a tiny island green 170 yards away where today the pin was placed only a few feet from the far edge of the water. A daunting prospect, therefore, for any golfer and one which has defeated Snopper almost every time he has attempted it. Even he has lost count of the number of golf balls he has lost in those dark forbidding waters.

But today, on his return to the fairways after a few weeks absence due to matters beyond his control, Snopper took his little grandfatherly four wood, struck the ball sweetly and saw it rise majestically over the lake and land a few feet from the pin. Two putts saw him par the hole for the first time in a long and undistinguished career. "About bleedin` time," he beamed in a post match interview.

From then on, however, the euphoria and the adrenalin rush of that moment seemed to play on the rest of his round, which inevitably ended in the now familiar mediocrity. No matter, for in that one moment on that testing hole, Snopper felt what it would be like to be a real golfer rather than persist with the haphazard, hit and hope hacking which is the hallmark of his game.