As usual I was almost late. I only lived five minutes from the golf club and so I always convinced myself I could leave it until the last minute before jumping into the car.
This was a Saturday mixed foursomes invitational competition which was something I didn't often get involved in. In fact, some of my Sunday morning golfing cronies would have been horrified that I had got roped in to play with women.
The Ladies Captain had called me earlier in the week to see if I would stand in and partner one Susan Armstrong, whose husband wouldn't be able to make it. The short, almost tubby, Ladies Captain was what you might call 'a substantial woman' -- Jean was probably about 60 and no glamour puss but she had a great sense of humour and I got on well with her.
"You'll like Susan," she said to me on the phone when I said I didn't know her at all, "She's got our perverted sense of humour. And she plays better golf than most of the women round here."
At 42 years old and playing off a respectable nine handicap, that sounded reasonably optimistic for me because mixed foursomes can be depressing stuff if you get lumbered with two geriatric spinsters. Sometimes the only spin-off is that you get to play from parts of the course you never knew existed before. (For non-golfers this means that your partner, with whom you hit alternate shots, more often than not hits her ball into the most unbelievable places. Please, no accusations of chauvinism; it's just true, that's all)
Susan Armstrong did not look to me like she would hit the ball anywhere but straight down the middle. She was on the driving range with our opponents when I panted up and made the usual apologies. Mrs Armstrong was stroking three-woods into the clear blue Suffolk sky with a lithe ease that suggested she had been playing good golf for more than a few years and that she was in excellent physical condition.
She was tanned and I put her about early forties and around five feet eight. She was a looker with a gorgeous figure and knew it. Blonde hair done up in a pony tail which stuck out through the back of her golf cap; a white buttoned shirt swelled by eye-catching breasts and a flared short dark blue skirt. White leather golf shoes with those cute little socks with the bobbles completed the uniform.
She extended a cool hand to me and fixed me with green eyes:
"Good morning, Peter, I'm so glad Jean persuaded you to come to our rescue. I'll need all the help I can get to beat these two," she said, introducing me to the remaining members of our foursome, a retired car dealer and his wife who I knew vaguely from the clubhouse. The wife had a reputation for overdoing the gin and tonics, as I recalled, but she was a mean hand with a putter.
We set off for the first tee and it occurred to me that, if nothing else, I was going to enjoy just looking at Susan Armstrong's sunburnt, smooth and oiled legs. It was mid May now in England and Spring had exploded on the East Anglian countryside. There was a soft, mild breeze blowing in from Holland across the North Sea and twice already I had caught exquisitely voyeuristic flashes of what looked like minimal white panties as the wind caught my partner's skirt.
What made this even more pleasant is that fewer and fewer women are wearing skirts to play golf in England. This depressing turn of events had been the subject of serious discussion in the clubhouse only the previous weekend. Slacks had become the order of the day with a transition to shorts when, or if, the English summer arrived.
It was pointed out that this disease may have been imported from the United States where skirts on female golfers appeared to have all but disappeared. For many years we had thrilled to the sight of the top lady players on the womens' European Tour flashing panties almost on the scale of the pro tennis tour. The gorgeous new stars of the golf course who had emerged from Sweden and Denmark were striking skirt-clad examples and many a male television cameraman became highly skilled in 'accidentally' catching a tantalising shot of a bulging pubic mound as these female players squatted to line up putts. Even the best looking women on the US Tour, however, always seemed to stride the fairways in heavy-duty, highly functional and totally unsexy shorts or slacks. Many, of course, were victims of America's obesity crisis – you don't have to be thin as a rake to play good golf – so they didn't relish the precision focus of the television camera on their abundant thighs in any case.
Of course, voyeuristic photographers and cameramen on the European Tour were undoubtedly what put the cat among the pigeons. Disgusting men just overdid it as usual and the miffed ladies revolted by donning the apparently armour-plated shorts of their US counterparts. But, thank Heaven, the wheel has come full circle again. The new breed of bosomy bombshells now gracing the US LPGA tour know the publicity value of a sneaky photo of their knickers so ladies' golf is becoming 'sexed up' again as this new generation wriggle into ever shorter skirts. The rising TV ratings for female golf coverage tell the tale.
"Jean tells me your husband has deserted you this weekend," I said to open our on-course conversation. We were sitting on a bench by the first tee where the group in front were still waiting for the course to clear before even they could drive off. With the course loaded it was going to be a very slow day but the weather was warming up nicely.
"Oh, Alex," she responded, "He's got some seminar in London this weekend, or that's the story, anyway."
"Oh, what does he do," I asked, thinking the tone of her reply was marginally interesting.
"Hmmm, mostly just what he likes, but professionally he's a senior partner in a chartered accountancy practice," said Susan. "Anyway, I'm happy to have a change of scenery and a change of conversation," she continued, patting my hand while she adjusted the tilt of her cap.
"I was just thinking the same thing," I ventured, "You've certainly got much nicer legs than my regular Sunday partners," as I pointedly looked at the sweep of her shapely and sexy right thigh, much revealed by the way she was now sitting on the bench to the left of me. "Have you been in the sun somewhere recently?"
She laughed, to my relief. "Not bad for a bird my age, don't you think." Then, to my mild amazement, she pulled her skirt up almost so I could see those panties again and looked at me quizzically, seeking approval, as if she needed any. I glanced around anxiously, this was the golf club, after all, but no-one was looking our way.
Susan smoothed her skirt down almost as quickly as she had shown me those mouth-watering legs.
"We have a villa in the Algarve where we go in the Spring each year," she explained, "We got back a couple of weeks ago but most of this tan has come in the last fortnight in the garden at the cottage we have near to the 15th fairway at Eastwell."
Eastwell was a lovely links course about 25 miles up the coast in the next county. The houses which surrounded it were expensive. The Norfolk country cottage and the house in Portugal suggested that things were going alright for Alex at the accountancy practice.
"I'm going up there tonight and I'll probably play there tomorrow," Susan crossed her legs again and uncovered once more that expanse of golden thigh. She looked over to the tee where the group in front were finally teeing up.
"God, we'll be here all day," she said, stretching her arms with a yawn to clasp her hands behind her head. The third button on her shirt eased out of it's buttonhole and I could see almost the entire profile of her left breast.
"Oops," said the gorgeous Susan, "I'm coming apart." She reached quickly to fasten the button and I said:
"Leave it, it'll make the walk more enjoyable." I said bluntly.
She cocked her head to one side, looked me up and down, and smiled. "Men", was all she said, but she did nothing about the button. There was a game on here, and it wasn't just going to be golf. My cock twitched in my slacks and I quite blatantly adjusted my underpants through the Chinos to make myself more comfortable.
"You should have worn shorts on a lovely day like this," she said. Now she had turned towards me, her elbow propped on the seat back supporting her head. The shirt gaped open and I could see the little decorative pink bow in the centre of her bra; a tiny trickle of sweat ran down her luscious cleavage.
"I'm glad you're not wearing any," I replied
"I certainly am and you couldn't tell that from where you're sitting anyway," she said indignantly.
"I meant shorts, silly. But since you brought up the subject, there's just no way in this world I could play eighteen holes with you in a short skirt and no panties. Something would get in the way of my swing."
I couldn't believe I was having this kind of conversation with a woman I had only met fifteen minutes earlier.
"Well, I better keep them on, then, because we need to beat this pair and qualify for the next round, don't you think. Although they're rather brief and thin for the golf course, actually," responded Susan, now openly flirting outrageously with me. The sexual electricity between us was palpable.
"Well, given the choice...... " I started, but we were interrupted by our opponents calling us to come up to the tee box.
Mrs Gin and Tonic and I hit respectable tee shots and our partners got us both on the green at the short par four first hole. We halved in fours.
The second hole has an elevated tee box and about eight railway sleeper steps are cut into the side to access both the men's' and the ladies' tees. When Susan ascended with her driver the car dealer and I fell silent. Hard-faced Mrs Gin and Tonic was ahead of her so was unaware of the blatant exhibitionism which was being undertaken. Near the top step Susan had bent to tie her shoelace – or at least pretended to tie her shoelace. Whether she was concerned or not about what he could see I don't know but the show was, I hoped, being staged for my specific benefit.