I knew he was going to be a bit of a handful on the first tee as he didn’t look at me when I asked his name while he was keenly practising his swing. He just muttered ‘Pierre’. Luckily I got the bag of affable Jean Claude and Kenny was left with Pierre.
It was on the fourth after a very bad drive that the odd behaviour started. Pierre hit it terribly and his ball only went twenty five yards into some very thick rough. He somehow found it and attempted to hit an ambitious shot up the fairway. He addressed it with great and serious purpose and took one almighty swing. There was a good enough contact and much flying turf and Pierre looked up in great expectation to the sky and fairway. There was a lull for a few seconds as the rest of the group looked hopelessly up the fairway with growing realisation that the ball might not have travelled very far. I guessed it hadn’t gone anywhere and was rather pleased that I was able to come up with the correct French ‘il bouge pas!’ (it didn’t move). Pierre looked across at me, in I would say an unsavoury way, and frantically in addition to some disbelief, searched the thick rough. He found it , picked it up with a furious expression on his face and stomped up the fairway without a word and ahead of us all.
A few holes later he had somehow fallen out with Kenny after ending up in a bunker. He fluffed his first shot and angrily claimed it wasn’t a bunker to the amusement of the group, for it was certainly a deep hole with a lot of sand in it. After this he decided to take his own trolley up the fairway and leave poor Kenny trailing behind him in obvious embarrassment. At this point Gary our ex-RAF caddie, 6 foot 5 rugby second row, had words with the guys and suggested that he should take over Pierre’s bag. Pierre’s feathers were slightly smoothed but not without a few other small incidents.
He was finally pleased with himself on the 18th as he hit a rather impressive shot from the rough behind the green to about five feet. Gary said ‘good shot’ but Pierre sprang across the green and explained that there had been a big clump of rough behind the ball and that ‘it was actually an excellent shot’.
Ooh la la!