David Mullin won the TEG 4 Green Jacket with a gross total of +81, the lowest gross aggregate recorded in TEG to that point and the best of his own career. The margin was 19 strokes over Stuart Neumann. Eighty-one shots more than the four courses asked for, and it was the finest golf TEG had seen. The standard is what it is.

The four rounds of the 2011 tournament took the field around East Sussex and Surrey, none of the courses previously visited: Royal Ashdown Forest, Lingfield Park, Crowborough Beacon and Bletchingley. Mullin's card read 91 at Ashdown, 94 at Lingfield, 88 at Crowborough and 91 at Bletchingley. No round worse than 94, and only one above 91.

The Crowborough round was the centrepiece. Mullin's 88 there came in at +17 against par, the second-best gross round in TEG history at the time, and it was his only sub-90 score of the trip. Crowborough, a heathland course with eight holes redesigned by Alister MacKenzie, gave up nothing similar to anyone else.

Neumann's tournament deserves separating from the margin. His +100 gross total was a personal best, built on rounds of 96, 99, 94 and 94, improving in each of the last three rounds. In most editions that would have been a competitive number. Here it was second place by nineteen, comfortably clear of the rest, and never once within hailing distance of the Jacket. He did everything that was asked of him. It was simply the wrong tournament to do it in.

Gregg Williams finished the 2011 trip to East Sussex and Surrey at +40 net against par, which was enough to hand him the TEG 4 Wooden Spoon. The number that will outlast the result is 28. That is how many triple bogeys or worse he assembled across four rounds. It is an all-time TEG record, and it is not a close one.

They arrived in clusters. At Royal Ashdown Forest in round one he bled 22 shots over the closing nine holes, with four triple bogeys among them. At Crowborough he lost 18 shots in the first six holes, including quadruple bogeys at the 2nd, 4th and 5th; by the time he walked to the 7th tee he was eighteen over for the day and had played six holes. The final round at Bletchingley was the worst of it: a triple, a quad and a nine at the par-five 6th cost 13 shots in four holes, and the closing stretch from the 13th leaked another 16. The round came in at +15 net and +43 gross, both the worst of his career to date.

The bottom of the Spoon race did change hands late. Williams dropped to last at the 6th in the final round, and Henry Meller relieved him of the position at the 11th with a ten at the par five. The relief proved temporary. Williams was holding it at the end.

One consolation: his gross aggregate of +152 was, at that point, the best he had recorded. A personal best constructed almost entirely from triple bogeys is still a personal best.

For all the length on offer across the four courses of TEG 4, the damage in 2011 was done on the holes nobody feared.

The largest single number came early. On the opening Monday at Royal Ashdown Forest, Henry Meller reached the 11th, a par three and the third-hardest hole on the card, and signed for a 12. Nine over par on one hole. Eight over after his shot allowance. It stands as the worst score relative to par that Meller has recorded on any hole, and the worst any player managed relative to par in TEG 4. There is no method of taking twelve shots at a par three that involves haste.

The final round at Bletchingley produced two more, and neither came at a hole that was supposed to cause trouble. Jon Baker took nine at the 12th, a par three carrying stroke index 18, the easiest hole on the course. That is six over par, five over net, and the heaviest hole of Baker's career to that point. Two holes later, at the 14th, another short hole and stroke index 16, Gregg Williams made seven for a quadruple bogey.

Between them, three par threes cost 19 shots against par across the four days. Bletchingley, a Paul Wright parkland course being played by the group for the first time, gave up two of them in the space of three holes on the closing day. It had presumably expected a warmer introduction.

Henry Meller left East Sussex in 2011 with the best gross aggregate of his career, +107 across the four rounds of the TEG 4 Green Jacket. The route there was not steady so much as tectonic.

It began at Royal Ashdown Forest, where the par-three 11th cost him a 12, nine over on a single hole, the worst score against par of his career and the worst by anyone in TEG 4. He recovered to sign for 100 there, then produced his lowest round of the trip at Lingfield, 92, built partly on three straight pars at the 9th, 10th and 11th. For a few minutes he looked like a man who had solved something. A nine at the 15th withdrew the suggestion.

Crowborough went backwards. From two over net in round two he slipped to 13 over net in round three, dropping five shots to his handicap across the 13th, 14th and 15th alone, and posting 102.

The final round at Bletchingley delivered both his lowest gross of the trip, 96, and its most damaging passage: 11 shots lost from the 8th to the 11th, including a 10 at the 11th, with another 10 following at the 15th. The quintuple bogey at the 11th also pushed him from fourth to last in the TEG 4 Wooden Spoon standings. He had done all that work to be fourth from bottom, and gave it away on one hole.