A team of veteran golfers from Minehead visited Sidmouth last week in warm and sunny weather, to play against the local seniors, writes Charles Oram.

Like Sidmouth, Minehead is a small seaside town and both the occasion and the setting brought to mind John Betjeman’s poem, ‘Seaside Golf’.

This describes the poet’s bounding drive to the fairway that made him glad to be alive.

The first Sidmouth pairing of Doug Goodall and Ian Brown produced enough bounding drives to the fairway to win their match two-and-one (with Goodall collecting the prize for nearest the pin).

Their score set a precedent for Sidmouth. It was a winning margin that was reproduced by John Billingsley and John Townsend and then by Les Pratt and Chris Grubb.

The appearance of John Anderson in the Sidmouth team, after spending the winter in the Antipodes, confirmed that summer had finally arrived!

He and Paul Blay overwhelmed their opponents five-and-four whilst the two David’s (Bromage and Roberts), had an equally impressive winning score.

It was not all plain sailing, however as Colin Mitchell and Bruce Harcourt, leading by four holes at one stage, were hauled back to be two down before claiming a last hole victory.

Colin Paddon and Terry Blackler showed more consideration to their opponents than their colleagues, in losing two-and-one.

Nevertheless, it was a comprehensive victory for the home side by five matches to one.

To those whose golf does not always lift their spirits, the following lines are offered as an antidote to Betjeman’s rose-tinted verse:

‘And as I’ve done in countless rounds,

I hit the darn thing out of bounds:

A very ugly, mistimed pitch

That hit a tree and found the ditch.

My grip was wrong, I moved my head -

It made me wish I’d stayed in bed!’