FOUR UNDER?

Our Golf Correspondent investigates

Having reported on the Royal and Ancient game for more years than I care to remember, there are still occasions when I find it hard to believe what I`m hearing. You see, reports filtered through to me late yesterday afternoon of an event at Hever Castle Golf Club down in leafy Kent that Snopper had actually completed his round of golf in a score of four under par. I thought this claim needed the kind of forensic investigation that, prima facie, it deserved, for if true we`re talking here about a truly momentous event. So, off I went to catch up with Snopper as he relaxed in a shady nook of the clubhouse with a large ice cold coke after an afternoon in the blazing heat of a glorious summer day.

And then the truth came out. Snopper hadn`t, in fact, played the 18 hole course at all - he had played the shorter but testing 9-holes of the Princes Course. Now, I should mention that yesterday was Snopper`s 71st birthday and so I was disinclined to press him too strongly about his reported four under par return. Nevertheless, as details began to emerge, it became clear that this was, after all, yet another in a seemingly endless string of Snopper-esque fantasies. He showed me his card for his round which showed that, doubtless with a degree of creative accounting and a liberal interpretation of the Rules of Golf, he had completed the 9 hole course in 48 strokes. So where did this four under par nonsense come from, I asked? "Well," explained Snopper, "I played nine holes at 48. Right? Double that for 18 holes and you get 96. Take off half my handicap of 28 from the 48 and you come to 34. Double that for 18 holes and you get 68. QED - that`s four under par. Geddit? "

Words failed me. Dumb I was indeed founded. I enquired gingerly about his handicap of 28, which is of course the maximum allowed for `gentlemen golfers.` "Well, I`ve never really had a handicap," he explained. "I work on the Sammy Davis handicap philosophy - you know the one. He was black, Jewish and only had one eye so he didn`t think he needed any more handicaps. Me, I`m 71 now, with arthritis and bunions - and I`m crap at golf anyway - so I reckon I`m entitled to the 28 handicap, don`t you?"

To end on a positive note. It seems he lost only three balls during his `round.` One of them ended up in a lake and a couple in dense undergrowth. The good news is that in trying to find those two, he actually found four others, so, like Basil Fawlty`s racing selections, for the first time in his life he was up on the deal. He also had an extra club in his bag as his neighbour, the long suffering Hurting Slightly Less of Leybourne, had lent him a 7-iron to sample in advance of a possible club transaction, so it`s quite likely that Snopper broke the rules on the number of clubs allowed.

"Slightly`s clubs could have legs," mused Snopper between gulps of coke, but I`m convinced that even the introduction of a hi-tech, state-of-the-art, whizzo, ocean-going set of clubs will make little difference, except perhaps to heighten still further the fantasia which Snopper`s golf has become.

Oh well, so much for investigative reporting and I wait to see whether he will have the nerve to post this report on his world-wide blog which itself must be a fantasist`s paradise.