Day 56 - The guest blog by Matt Cleary after his drubbing at St Michael's

Posted by Matt Cleary on 25 February 2010 | 1 Comments | Tags: St Michael's, Sydney, TV

Greetings fellow global golf travel voyeurs.

Matt Cleary here, I�??m the sports journalist these two wandering golf adventure chancers have been mentioning in previous despatches and I�??ve been charged with writing this Special Guest Blog because the boys are off to the town of Nowra and it�??s possible the town of Nowra is not yet connected with the global interconnected �??web�?� of computers known as �??The Internet�?�.

Actually Nowra does have �??The Internet�?�, it�??s three hours south of Sydney and a nice enough town if you like pubs full of toothless fisherman, man-eating sharks and race riots, none of which is true though there are sharks at nearby Jervis Bay because they breed there and, presumably, make shark love. Good luck to them.

So! The boys and myself and Luke �??Elvis�?� Elvy from Fox Sports a television program that�??s all about sport as is right and proper played golf St.Michael�??s in Sydney�??s east a course founded by Catholics in 1925 because they weren�??t allowed to play elsewhere such were the times, or maybe it�??s because they wanted to play with other Catholics, or maybe something else I have no idea I made it all up. But there is some historical thing about the club�??s catholic roots that you could look up if you were of a mind. And good luck to you. 

So! We played St.Michael�??s which is a champion golf course with superb fairways, greens harder than a very hard maths test and rough so thick that if you walk into it it might actually attack you like a triffid or that plant that ate that house on Doctor Who a show that was on in the olden days or at least a bit before these two Kiwi were alive, I would warrant. But it�??s pretty rough rough the rough, and more than once the Kiwis looked for their balls fearful of horrible gurgling death by red-bellied black snake and/or bears which drop from the trees like furry ninja assassins. Someone might have warned them of these things when they were 4-up with eight to play.

Unfortunately for Elvis and I who formed the Australian half of this Second Bledisloe Cup encounter, the lads didn�??t go looking often, and dusted us 6-and-5 in the 4BBB match-play second-ball counts format. Unhappy days, though given I was able to fill them full of beer an hour after they got off the plane on Saturday and teamed myself with a 62-year-old South African who swings the club cack-handed and plays off six like Jesus would if he were six-marker, it�??s actually 1-all in Bledisloe Cup standings and the three-Test series is very much alive and will be concluded when the boys are back in Sydney in April thereabouts when Elvis gets us on some flash place on the North Shore of Sydney Town such is the man�??s unparalelled power.

St.Michael�??s? Superb piece of real estate. Holes either wind through the bush �?? dominant organisms: witch-finger shrubs and ti tree �?? or roll by the Pacific Ocean or is it the Tasman Sea I can never tell it�??s all bloody water. Anyway it�??s a ripper St.Mick�??s and you should play in their Thursday Open Comp when you�??re in the eastern suburbs of Sydney because it�??s a ripper. And for forty bucks ($NZ427.50) it represents Top Value.

The boys played pretty well, roughly to the handicaps they claim are there�??s but which they really should be arrested for given they appear to be crimes against burglary for which they probably should be sent to a penal colony like Australia once was in chains and then whipped and put in a gulag and made to knit their own food from cat hair. Just putting it out there.

But actually they did play well. Jamie hits a big high hook that�??s like a boomerang that comes halfway back while Mike spanks a two-iron like Michael Jackson used to spank his huge troop of monkeys. (Ha!) But what won the lads this encounter is that the bastards, particularly the funny Scottish one, putted like Gary Player putting to save his quite considerable fortune which meant Elvis and I had buy them drinks after the game such are the ways of men.

The second nine Elvis�??s Fox Sports camera crew turned up and followed us around which caused a brief cessation in the beating. A bigger case of stage fright than a 17-year-old in the lavatory of that pub in Once Were Warriors. �??Eek! Too much weights and not enough speed work!�?� said the boys or something like it, as Elvis and I took the tenth hole after I spanked a quite magnificent birdie and the boys blocked their approach shots further right than Pauline Hanson. Four-down and the Aussies were back.

But from there it was all Kiwi and Elvis and I were done n dusted like so many versions of Australian road-kill, a particular piece of Australiana the boys are going to be seeing a fair bit of in the next couple of months as they continue their extraordinary odyssey. (And just as an aside: How about this trip! Who are these people!?)

Back at the golf and in the ways of men we went double-or-nothing on the last five holes and despite going one-up had to win the last hole to halve that particular match, which we did so we didn't buy them sandwiches as well. But then I did buy them a sandwich anyway because they look thinner than the half-a-dozen lob-wedges I skulled across St.Michael�??s superb hard greens.

Jamie had to eat the Weet-Bix.

Afterwards! the boys were interviewed by Elvis on the balcony of St.Michael�??s with the Tasman Sea views and you�??ll see the whole shebang if you tune into The Golf Show on Tuesday night at 7:30 but only if you live in the country of Australia which the boys are quite enjoying despite taking money off good honest journalists like me and Elvis who plays off six but did not today no-one knows why not even Jesus or Gary Player or Jake the Mus.

This arvo they�??re off to Nowra like I writ before, and then Narooma, and then Lakes Entrance, three coastal country towns where the sheep aren�??t nervous because they�??re more dairy farming communities which also have fishing and tourism industries that prop up the local economies.

Three nice little golf courses too.

And bye for now.