Europro opener

Hi everyone,

I am just home from a wet, windy and extremely foggy Montrose so it is time for another update. The last week I have played two events, the first of which was a one day event on the 1836 tour at Clitheroe Golf Club near Blackburn. It was an early start as we left to drive down at 5:15am but we got quiet traffic and were there by 9. I had not played the course before but I find a lot of the time if you do not know where the trouble is that you won’t hit it in it. I started very well with birdies on the first two holes, but was set back with bogeys on 6 and 7 for a level par front 9. The back 9 I hit it well and just failed to convert many of my birdie chances despite putting well, I ended up birdieing 13 and bogeying 14 for a level par round of 71, this gave me a tied 8th place finish although with an extremely bunched leader-board I was only one shot from finishing tied 2nd.

The second event was my first event of the season on the Europro tour at Montrose Links, a fantastic traditional links course in Angus. I had been hitting the ball very well leading up to it and had high hopes. My tee time for the first day was 11:51 and when I woke up at 6:30 I had a message from the Europro saying “The first round is delayed by 30 minutes due to fog”. These message kept coming every half hour until play finally began at 9:30 (making my tee time 2:51). However as I was arriving at the golf club I got another message to say that play had been suspended again due to the fog coming back in. There was no play the rest of the day and my tee time was rescheduled for 8:24am on Wednesday. Once again my phone had a message at 6:30 and there was more delays so it was another morning of killing time. I eventually started my first round at 1:15pm on the second day of the tournament.

It was an unfortunate way for the draw to pan out the way it did as the people that played the first day had a mild breeze from the south, making the front 9 downwind and therefore playing relatively easy. Then the second day the early starters had the back nine downwind as well as the wind switched to be out the north. When I did tee off the first 7 holes were playing into the wind which was about 20mph as well as it being freezing cold rain into our faces. I actually played well for the round despite having a double bogey on the second hole due to my drive ending up on a big upslope just left of the fairway and me probably trying to be a little greedy with the second shot. I managed to make pars on the next 11 holes after that before having a couple of bogeys coming in. I can honestly say I have never been that cold on a golf course in my life as I don’t normally feel it.I definitely got the worst of the draw and this was evident in the amount of later starters that made the cut, which due to all the delays ended up being after 1 round rather than 2.  I ended up shooting 77, which in the conditions wasn’t too bad, I drove the ball and putted very well so there are lots of positives to take into the next event.  Unfortunately I missed it by 3.

I have lots of areas on my game that I feel are improving a lot and I am very much looking forward to my next event which is at Wychwood Park on the 6th and 7th of May. I think there is some good scores in there and I am working my hardest to keep shooting better scores each time.

Thank you for reading

Neil