If you read the last article (and if not why not?!) you’ll know that myself and 3 of my friends took the rite of passage that is ‘the first foreign golf trip’. Not only did we decide to fight our way from one country to another while carrying enormous travel bags but we decided that if we were going to do this, we would do this in style. So when we were deciding where to go, the requirements were that it was a course that was appropriate to our high class and demanding requirements – a 5 star hotel with at least one decent golf course attached to it, a swimming pool with a bar…actually that was pretty much it.

Penina in southern Portugal was the chosen destination. A beautiful hotel with a 6900 yard championship course designed by Henry Cotton (winner of 6 majors) as well as a 9 hole resort course and rated as one of the Top 100 courses in Europe. We had booked in a double loop of the resort course for the first day before we would chance our arm on the championship course on days 2 and 3. We figured that these things are best not rushed and wanted to saviour the moment of teeing off on such a wonderful course and besides, we didn’t want to make complete arses of ourselves. At least not straight away.

At this point I feel I should introduce who I managed to convince to come on the trip.

Alex: the cool as a cucumber airline pilot. Much loved by ladies for his tall, dark and handsome looks as for the fact that since the dawn of time he has been known by the nickname ‘Kiddie’. Perpetually jet-lagged, his perfect holiday consists of sleeping, golf, sleeping and chatting up beautiful women, but then again, whose doesn’t? Fights a hook.

Henry: 6ft 5in of flame haired West Country farm boy with arms like a gorilla. Known to all but his mother and fiancé as ‘Homer’ (Seriously, what else are you going to call someone who has the initials H J Simpson). He has played sport for his country and has hollow legs where alcohol is involved. Fights a slice and people who don’t think cider is as good as fine wine.

William: Billy to his mates. Billy is the epitome of the All-American blonde haired, blue eyed boy. Cosmopolitan, having lived in the UK and Germany as well as all across the US, he has a high powered job doing some sort of marketing to billion dollar companies that would make him easy to hate if it weren’t for that fact that a) he’s possibly the most personable man in the world and b) is completely unable to chat up girls. Fights a hook-slice (I don’t know how he hits a shot that appears to defy the laws of physics but if you play a round with him you will see it at least once every couple of holes).

Me: the poor sad golf obsessive that convinced them that this would be a good thing to do. Fights the urge to play golf every single waking moment of the day.

The resort course was a simple layout and not overly difficult, so perfect for us. The first round was pretty relaxed. With no one in front or behind us, we could play our normal game. We could take as long as we liked over our shots, we could hit extra balls if we duffed our shots (we needed the practise) and importantly hoot, holler and yell at each other. The normal friendly abuse and banter that makes a social round so much fun.

The scoring was nothing to write home about but tramping around in an orange grove while the sun gently beats down is certainly one of the most pleasant ways to look for a lost ball. Only Homer was having any real difficulty with the course because he was reading the distance markers in yards rather than the metres they were really measured in. We were having far too much fun watching him lashing at the ball to bother telling him. Trust me, when a farmer scythes at the ball, he really means it. The ball, large lumps of sod and occasionally reasonably sized rocks would go flying towards the hole as he yet again completely under-clubbed.

Occasionally he would flush the ball out of the middle which would result in some spectacular shots. The best one of the day was all of 270 yards right down the very centre of the fairway. Not unusually impressive with a driver or a 3 wood but this was with a 25 degree hybrid and not an expensive super-duper ‘Tour-only’ hybrid but one that he appeared to have got from a cereal box. As we watched with mouths agape, Homer stepped down from the tee box. ‘Roight. That’s how you do it down the farm’ he said, with a look of ill-concealed delight, as if he would normally expect to hit this shot and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been doing it all morning. As someone who wrestles with farm equipment he’s a big lad but all I could think was ‘He’s a fruit farmer…how much subduing do raspberries need?’.

After the round, we gathered for some beers around the pool so we could rehash our round, lie about how badly we had played in comparison to how we play normally and discuss how we were going to play the Championship course the next day. As I was the only person to actually belong to a club, the others decided that on all holes where people would be watching, I would tee off first in the misguided belief that I would be able to get a good tee shot off and so convince the staff that we weren’t complete hackers. Which in my opinion was like painting ‘Fido’ on an elephant to convince people it’s a Chihuahua. As it we had an early tee time we all solemnly agreed that we would take it easy that night so that we would be prepared for the stern test ahead.