Quite a fun round yesterday morning as we had a very pleasant group from down south and I had an ex R and A captain who was an amusing and lovely chap. It was quite refreshing to go back to good old fashioned gowff. Small and light golf bags, no fuss, quick play, much couth behaviour and lots of ‘giving it a spanking, titanic shots, Holy Moly’s and splendid strikes’.
It was interesting to hear a bit about the role of an R and A captain. Hamish had to do a total of fifty five speeches in his term. That is more than one a week! (I think?). It included an introductory talk at The Masters opening dinner. And I am sure he did a very good job too.
In the afternoon we thought our group were Spanish as they spoke very fast and animatedly in the said tongue and one looked remarkably like a young Ballesteros. We all began shaking hands introducing ourselves and there was indeed a Jose and Lorenzo and Juan. So I thought I would confirm their nationality when Jose says ‘no, Venezuelan’ and I am next paired off to a smiling chap who says ‘I am German’, and I said ‘are you?’ with some surprise because he looked the most South American of the lot.
But Germen enlightened me and it turns out they are a bunch of young Venezuelan ex-pats living in Miami. And I would never would have got that.