It’s a board comp, not the bloody Open Championship!

It’s the [insert name of dead person here] cup this weekend. But the dude that’s been planted for half a century has got more chance of being in the field than me.

Forget golf is for everyone. Whenever there is a board competition, it seems the only way I can get on the 1st tee is to sneak up on a threeball like that guy who used to stand at the edge of team photos in Champions League matches.

My crime? Not being omnipresent at the club. For the heinous act of having a life outside the confines of the car park and its reserved spaces, I do not possess the required scores to be deemed worthy of teeing it up in the ‘Smithers Quaich’ – or whatever the hell it’s called.

I’m far from the only person to fall foul of a club competition entry policy that’s tougher to negotiate than a 90s doorman when you’re wearing trainers.

Club competitions: “Systems aren’t necessarily stupid. People, however, definitely can be”

High handicappers? You’re out. ‘We’re not engraving the name of someone who has shot 105 on the wall’.

Too many social scores? ‘Not on our watch. You might as well drop a ball out of a trouser pocket if you’re going to pull that cheating malarkey with us’.

What is it about a name on a bit of wood that sends committee members running around like Cpl Jones in Dad’s Army assuming every golfer is a 9-iron wielding Niccolo Machiavelli?

I want to blame the World Handicap System for this with every fibre of my being. I want to tear it down like a baying mob around a statue of an old Communist leader.

But systems aren’t necessarily stupid. They’re just algorithms. People, however, definitely can be.

It wasn’t WHS that decided you needed something like a dozen competition scores to get into a midweek Stableford.

That was someone so paranoid about protecting a £20 voucher they dreamed up an elaborate series of tasks that made entering a competition more difficult than getting round the Crystal Maze.

I’m all for tradition but not when it means I can’t enter! It’s a board comp, not the bloody Open Championship!

Now have your say

What do you make of the Angry Club Golfer’s latest rant on club competitions? You can take him to task by giving him a barrel load on X.

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