Dublin, March 2017

Among presents from the last Christmas we got golf kits.
Roger was excited and predicted that by the end of the year we'd be competing with pro golfers on pro courses all around Ireland...

Click each photo to enlarge

Now, at this stage we were complete beginners and we needed to practice golf and play a couple of matches before attending major pro golf tournaments. We went out to the garden only to realize that the gardening season had hardly begun: the grass was tall as in a dense jungle.
"It seems we need machetes in order to complete a full match," McBear concluded.
But at least the garden was big enough for a full one hole golf course.

Soon we were losing golf balls at an alarming rate - on average 2 per hit.
"Damn!" said Roger annoyed and searched for his golf ball. "This time either my golf ball went down a worm hole or a crow mistook it for a piece of sweet corn."
"We need to calculate our handicap", McBear pointed out. "Let me see: compared to humans, bears are roughly scale 1:8. So... if human beginners have a handicap of 39, bears should be granted a handicap of 312."
"Okay," Roger continued. "then let's say it takes humans an estimated 5 hours to complete an 18 hole course. Scaling this to our size, how many days would we be spending on the course?"
"Oh stop, Roger, please! My head can't compute more numbers - it's getting unbearable."
"Wonder if we'd be allowed to camp on the green - you know, tents, cosy camp fire, guitar, grill and all..."
"Are you nuts?" asked McBear.

To speed up the process of hitting, searching, hitting, searching etc. we invited our humans to play a match with us... meaning: mow the lawn, please! Now, that of course raised other issues like when three golf balls landed fairly close to one another.
"Which golf ball is yours?" asked Roger.
"Mmmm... the white one - I think"
"The white one? Well, that really narrows it, doesn't it?"
"Oh... eh, I mean the small one..."
By now McBear was a bit behind on the score sheet and he had been granted an extra handicap of 22.

There were no lakes in the garden so we had no natural water hazards. Instead, we had borrowed our cats' water bowl and carried it outside. But as we were walking towards the green looking for our golf balls, McBear made an unpleasant discovery.
"Damn!" McBear mumbled. "My latest hit ended in a splash".
"That's disgusting!" Roger said. "The water is contaminated now. Poor cats!"

Having lost a considerable amount of golf balls we finally reached a clearance in the jungle. Here, one of our humans had dug up a hole. We didn't have any golf flags but the Irish tricolour made an excellent replacement.
"This is the roughest green I have ever seen!" Roger stated as he made another attempt to put his golf ball.
At least there were no sand bunkers, but Tiger, our monster cat, turned out to be a major obstacle as he lay there in the sun - and he had caught several golf balls landing nearby!
McBear had severe difficulties passing Tiger without losing more golf balls and he was getting increasingly desperate.

After a long day on the course, the bears went back to the house.
"Do we know who won and who lost?" Sam asked Tom on the door step.
"No..." Tom replied, "...but let me see if I can guess."