THE latest instalment of my ongoing battle with my brother-in-law turned out to be something of a classic, with a closer finish than had initially been expected, some fun in the sand and the case of the mysteriously appearing ball.

Having beaten Steve for the first time in a while the last time we had crossed clubs, I feared a backlash, particularly as I had just written about it in this very column.

My troubles duly began on the very first hole, a sliced tee-shot followed by a series of duffs resulting in a triple-bogey eight and a one hole deficit that I was never to recover from.

I was three down by the time we got to the fifth hole, where we encountered a very strange incident.

Steve sliced his drive into some trees and, as we began to look for the ball, I caught a glimpse of one bouncing and coming to rest in the rough behind my opponent.

We hadn’t heard anybody shout a warning and we were a long distance away from any other holes, making it hard to work out where the stray ball had come from.

I pointed it out to Steve, adding that it was not his as I had seen it come to rest. He immediately picked it up and put it in his bag and nobody else ever ventured onto the hole looking for a ball. Quite a conundrum.

Anyway, Steve had extended his lead to four holes by the time we came to the ninth tee, at which point I decided to adjust my set-up slightly.

The results were amazing as I got up and down from a bunker to make par and I played much better from then on.

Unfortunately, I was unable to reel Steve in and found myself three-down with three. A good long putt on the 16th saw me keep the game alive and, having seen Steve capitulate in the past, thoughts of a draw entered my mind when he put his tee shot to the par-three 17th into the water.

However, I was in a greenside bunker and when it took me three shots to get out, the game was up, Steve winning the match 2&1 with a triple-bogey six.

Even more annoying was the fact that the round was my birthday present to Steve, meaning I had paid for him to beat me. A glutton for punishment, some might say.

Follow me on Twitter