Are you a Gunner or a Hillbilly?
I remember playing with an old boy with a lilting gait who consumed the best part of a litre of Coca Cola in his morning round which I thought was curious but when I saw him topping it up with more Shiraz for the afternoon game I realised that it wasn't the sugar rush he was looking for. That is not something I can manage.
At the end of a game I would rather not chase down a couple of pints of bitter to rehydrate and automatically exceed a reasonable level of alcohol. I prefer a similar volume of something non-alcoholic before seeking a proper drink. But which one to choose?
It is probably no easier to define a links course than pin down the definitive Gunner or Hillbilly recipe. I am hoping that there are less alternatives than the 165 links courses. So I will start with Robbie Sackett and his team at the hatch bar at the venerable Royal West Norfolk Golf Club. He is the perfect steward and gave me these recipes.
Gunners:
Angostura bitters
Grapefruit juice
Ginger beer
Hillbilly
Angostura bitters
Lemonade
Grapefruit juice
Luddington
Angostura bitters
Ginger beer
Lemonade
Rock Shandy
Angostura bitters
Ginger beer
Lemonade
Soda
John Panton
Angostura bitters
Lime cordial
Ginger beer
Robbo also has a concoction named after him by an American lady but I cannot honestly recommend it even if it gives him immortality; Orange juice, Angostura bitters and tonic water. It tasted rather like mango juice.
Ironically the one common theme is the alcoholic content in the bitters. But leaving that aside the question is whether you like grapefruit juice which is a fairly sharp divide. They obviously love it in Norfolk. Robbo was not that impressed with the John Panton which he decried as Scottish.
My firm favourite on the Robbo scale is a John Panton but which I, and Rye, and many places along the south coast call a Gunner. Use the recipe above but with a soda water top up. Alternatively you can use ginger ale to pep it up. Perhaps I should call this The Links Golfer?
Let me know if you have more recipes or different names for the same recipe and we shall see if we can identify regional variations and maybe a consensus
