TEG 2 was played entirely at Boavista Golf & Spa Resort in Lagos, a Howard Swan parkland course none of the field had seen before, and it was the 14th that introduced itself most forcefully. A par three off stroke index 7. In Round 1 it took an 8 or worse from three separate players, in the manner of a toll booth nobody had budgeted for.

The heaviest payment came from Gregg Williams, who signed for a 9. A sextuple bogey, and his worst score on any par three anywhere. It sat in the middle of a closing run in which he dropped 22 shots across holes 12 to 18, including a second quintuple bogey at the 17th. Henry Meller also made 8 there, his fourth large number in a five-hole sequence from the 11th that cost him 20 shots. Stuart Neumann's 8 arrived inside a five-hole stretch from the 13th that leaked 14.

Neumann returned the following day and did precisely the same thing, another 8 at the same par three in Round 2. Both were quintuple bogeys. Both remain his worst efforts on a par three. There is a consistency there that a kinder sport would reward.

All three recorded their best gross of the trip in Round 3: 91 for Meller, 92 for Neumann, 105 for Williams. The course, and the 14th in particular, was learned the hard way and paid for in advance.

David Mullin took the TEG 2 Green Jacket at Boavista with a gross total of +66, eleven clear of Stuart Neumann. Across three rounds on the same Howard Swan parkland course in Lagos, Mullin never permitted the tournament a shape other than his own.

He opened with +20, the best gross round in TEG history to that point. He then improved on it in the final round with +18, an 89, his lowest score of the trip. In between came a +28, the third-best gross round recorded at the time. Three rounds, three of the strongest gross scores anyone had yet produced. It was less a contest than a demonstration.

Neumann's difficulty was that he played genuinely well and lost ground anyway. His opening +29 was the second-best gross round in TEG history to date, and worth 11 Stableford points, the third-best round then recorded. It left him nine behind. The bill was presented over five holes from the 13th, where he dropped 14 shots without a net par, including a quintuple-bogey 8 at the par-three 14th, his worst return on a par three. His second round of +27 matched the second-best gross mark and clawed back exactly one shot, to eight. Then he made 8 at the 14th again, which rather undid the mood.

By the closing round the gap had stretched to eleven. Neumann did at least interrupt a run of bogeys or worse with a birdie at the 11th, and signed for 92, his best of the three days. He had chased hard, chased well, and finished further away than when he started.

Gregg Williams made three 9s at Boavista, two of them in the same round, which suggests a man committed to a theme.

The first came at the par-three 14th in the opening round, a sextuple bogey that remains the worst hole he has played relative to par. The second arrived three holes later at the 17th, a par four, for a quintuple bogey. The 17th is stroke index 17, the easiest hole on the card. It had done nothing to deserve this.

Both sat inside a closing stretch that came apart entirely. From the 12th to the 18th in round one, Williams played seven holes in 22 over par, with a double bogey or worse at every single one of them. Not one hole broke ranks.

Round two was steadier only in the sense that a slower leak is still a leak: a quadruple-bogey 7 at the par-three 6th, 13 shots dropped between the 11th and the 15th, and a quadruple-bogey 8 to finish at the last.

The third 9 came in the final round at the 12th, a par four and the third-hardest hole on the course, for another quintuple bogey. That it landed in his best round of the trip tells you what the others were like. Williams signed for 105 on the Monday, his lowest score of the three days. TEG 2 was his first visit to the Algarve course, and Boavista collected what it was owed in a small number of very large instalments.

Henry Meller took the TEG 2 Wooden Spoon, finishing at +39 net against par at Boavista, the Howard Swan parkland outside Lagos that hosted all three rounds of the 2009 trip.

The ruin was administered early and in one sitting. In the first round Meller played holes 11 to 15 in twenty shots over par: a triple bogey at the short 11th, quadruple bogeys at the 12th, the 13th and the 15th, and a quintuple-bogey 8 at the par-three 14th. Five holes, not one net par, ten net shots short of the mark. The 15th, the hardest hole on the card, took four of them and could presumably have taken more had it asked.

The recovery arrived, and arrived far too late to be of any use to anyone. Meller's second round was worth +13 net. His third was +2, an improvement of eleven shots between rounds. He birdied the par-four 5th, parred the 6th, and signed for a gross 91, +20 for the round and the second-best gross round recorded in TEG history to that point. This is the golf of a serious man. It was played by someone whose Spoon had been settled since the first afternoon.

It was also his best score of the three days at Boavista, a course none of the field had seen before. The final round existed largely to show what Meller had been capable of throughout, which is a cruel thing for a final round to do.