Good Sports

“I was playing golf”

No, not me.

Golf is a game played by people with few friends.

The golfer had a caddy. Very necessary when you have just the one club in a bag on the back seat of your buggy. It was a 5 iron I think. He didn’t have any balls. Maybe he’d been playing shadow golf.

Judging from the state of them, they hadn’t been playing by Royal and Ancient rules either. Tut-tut. He’d never make the Ryder Cup team like this. Still, no-one wanted an ambulance. It was just to be my time that was going to be wasted.

“Check the CCTV”

He’d been watching TV too.

After pointing out the lack of cameras on this particular busy road. I thought I’d try some old-fashioned policing. Like asking the person who’d called us what had happened. That would be the shadow golfer then.

“Just do your job”

Aha. A typical Small Corner victim.

“We give a lot of money to the Police.”

Wow. A real, live (if slightly dishevelled), honest-to-goodness taxpayer. Time to pull out all the stops then.

Giving the taxpaying shadow golfer a chance to collect his thoughts. I go on a witness hunt.

Two steps take me to the bus queue. Been waiting 20 minutes? Didn’t see a thing? Fair enough.

I’ll try the half-full pub across the road then. Bound to be some keen sports fans in there.

“We didn’t see nuffink.”

They hadn’t quite synchronised their greeting. It was enough to give me the general gist. I thought I’d explore the double negative, just to make sure.

Apparently, he had been over-extending on his back swing. There was some suggestion of early head movement. Plenty of running on the greens too. I got the impression that no-one would be telling tales to the committee. His club membership wouldn’t be threatened.

I struck gold in the fast food shop next door. Small Corner’s top witness just happened to be present. Mr Pars Refused had seen everything and was waiting for me to approach him so he could give his expert analysis.

It seemed the shadow golf game had strayed onto a baseball diamond. The local American League affiliated team had arrived for some much needed shadow batting practice. The designated hitter hadn’t brought his glasses and had inadvertently struck the caddy. Several times. After chasing him around for a bit.

The shadow golfer wasn’t going to be outdone. He attempted a rather ambitious drive. Unfortunately, he lifted his head too early and lost his balance. The baseball team expressed their displeasure at this in an uncouth manner.

After a brief game of shadow golfer football. The baseball team finished their training session and left at high speed. In a white car and a blue car. Obviously Yankees fans.

I returned to Nick and Fanny to impart the good news.

Nick wasn’t in the listening mood. He was far too busy berating the Yankees captain on his phone. My partner looked puzzled. It seemed Nick and Fanny had never met the baseball team before. Ever. Maybe he had got lucky with directory enquiries.

“You can’t do anything for us.”

That’ll be the phone call finished then. Time for them to get in their buggy and head for the 19th hole.

Damn. Maybe I should have tried harder.

One more unsolved violent crime.

If only there’d been a CCTV camera.