Spring is on the way and the Saturday instructions indicate a full house for the next round of the Winter Competition. In the event 8 become 7 as Rover's fabled reliability becomes a liability and leaves Brett standed on the M42 hard shoulder waiting for the Churchill breakdown service (Ohhhh yes!).

(This may of course be a tissue of lies and he's actually off to Jade Goody's wedding, but history tells us it will be at least 6 months before we know the truth - unless we can spot him in "OK" magazine).

The lead three are Turbo, Cutie-Cutie and Tate who signals his intent by dobbing a drive into the stream in front of the 1st tee for the first duck of the day. The 4-ball of Nance, Mr. Grumpy, DJ and Fat-Boy follow on, start off like rockets but scrobble about on holes 7 through 9. Nonetheless a nett 40 points is enough for a 5 point lead at Lawrence's variable pricing refreshment gazebo.

The greens have been hollow-tined which makes putting an amusing affair with good putts turning right angles and crap putts going in.

The back 9 follows a similar pattern, the lead 3 struggling to make an impression and the 4-ball doing enough to run out clear victors by 13 points. Individually it's a 3-way tie with Nance, Fat-Boy and Mr. Grumpy all on 34 points. Extra holes were eschewed in favour of pork pie and lager.

Following last weeks dropping rules controversy, Mr. Grumpy needs and gets a free drop from a pile of logs and DJ decides to make Muffin's history with an unplayable lie so far into the roots of a tree a hobbit was recruited to extract it.

Finally, Tate forewarns the assembled company that he's relying on an on-time flight from Dublin at 06:30am next Sunday morning to deliver him to OGC for 08:15am. It remains to be seen whether Aer Lingus are any more reliable than the Rover Group and whether the fine is as punitive.