The third edition of the Masturds leaves for British Columbia on 22 September. There is a trophy to defend, a field that has moved considerably since Portugal, and one man arriving with no record at all.
Two years ago four men went to Myrtle Beach for a week of golf and made no arrangements beyond turning up. There were no teams. There was no trophy. There was a schedule that its own architect now concedes was too ambitious, and a scoring system that has never been satisfactorily explained.
Last September in Portugal it acquired a rulebook, two captains, a gold cup and eight players. It has not been the same thing since.
On 22 September it goes to the Kootenays.
Five men fly from London to Vancouver on the Tuesday, overnight at the airport, and land at Trail at half past ten the following morning. From there it is fifteen minutes to Rossland, a mountain town in the south-east corner of British Columbia, where Jack Church has lived for the last two years and where the first tee at Redstone is a two-minute walk from the door.
Six sessions decide the cup, across four courses, between Thursday 24 and Monday 28 September. Sixteen points are available. The holders need eight; everybody else needs eight and a half.
Then, on the Monday afternoon, three of them fly home and four of them drive east into the Rockies for four more courses and another four days, because the week has never known when to stop.
Liam Wilkinson defends. He captained the Hozel Rockets to an 11½–6½ win in Lisbon and the trophy has sat in his house in Nottingham ever since. He will have to bring it with him.
Guy Mitchell captains the challengers. He has never won a match in this tournament — three singles in Lisbon, three defeats, and every point he has ever scored came out of a scramble in which four men were credited the same two.
The field has got better. Every returning player who has actually played has cut his handicap. The average has come down from 21.5 to 19.1, and only one man has moved the wrong way. He is one of the captains.
And the eighth man on any given day will be somebody who lives here.
Seven is an odd number and a Ryder Cup needs even teams, so each session is made up to eight by a player from Rossland. The 8th Man is not a guest or a marker. He goes into the draft pool with the seven, he counts for cup points, and either captain can spend a pick on him.
Men's night at Redstone on 23 September is worth nothing. Everybody plays, 8th Man candidates included, and both captains are in the field watching.
The teams are drafted that evening, once the prizes are done. One pool, alternating picks, nobody pre-assigned to anything. A player from Rossland could go first. One of them will go last, and will have to stand in the room while it happens.
Which makes the opening eighteen holes of the week eighteen holes of live evidence, played on eight hours of jet lag, in front of the two men about to pick sides.
There is now a record — every scorecard, every match, every result from Myrtle Beach and Lisbon, and the founding story written down for the first time. There is a scouting report, which is the document the captains will argue over on the Wednesday night. And there is a book, priced off two hundred thousand simulations, which makes some claims about all of you that you are welcome to dispute.
Everything on it is a draft. That is the point of sending it now.
Forty-one days.