2020 – A Different Year

The venues had been arranged, emails were starting to fly around, there was a month to go before the start of our season. Then BoJo comes on TV to say, “Stay at home, there is a nasty bug called Covid-19 going round!”. Lockdown 1 had arrived but all being well we would be up and running again in April.

As we now know Covid-19 was about to change our lives. While golf was one of the first sports allowed to restart but it wasn’t until July at Chiddingfold that we managed to get out as a society. Of course by then most of us had been playing in 2 or 4 balls at our clubs or elsewhere so it was nice to have a ‘get together’ even if we were sitting at tables of 4, socially distanced, eating our packed lunches with a drink and a bottle of sanitiser by our sides. Chiddingfold looked after us well.

It was all very different when we played at Puttenham, where we were the second or third society they had had there. We managed to defeat all their carefully thought through socially distancing measures, few of us found the putting green and we were threatened with being thrown off the course before we had started. However once we had tee’d off it was a good day. After everyone had left the club and I discussed what had happened and left on friendly terms and a better understanding of each others expectations. We have a date for 2021 sorted out already.

Littlehampton for bacon rolls, replacing the popular breakfast, in August was as popular as ever. Most stayed afterwards for something else to eat. For some of us that was the first meal had out since March!

Finally in September we rounded off the season with a day at Petersfield. No end of season meal but an enjoyable day never the less.

No records were kept of our rounds, so there were no annual awards for this unusual season. Although I ought to mention that there were 2 eagles during the season, one at Chiddingfold and the other at Littlehampton but no holes-in-one. No doubt there were several 3 or 4 putts but who remembers them!

Southwick and Cowdray were cancelled completely. Both are on the calendar for 2021.