Royal Burgess and Renaissance
It is a couple of weeks since I wrote a blog so I thought I would update everyone on my progress.
I have played two events since I last spoke to you, the first of which was the Europro Tour at Royal Burgess in Edinburgh. The course is set in the west side of Edinburgh and is the oldest golfing society in the world. The course for the tournament was presented immaculately with nice fairways and fantastic greens which were running true and about 11 on the stimp meter. I played the first day in the morning and didn’t play the way I wanted to. I hit a lot of good shots but just had a few too many mistakes early on and after that I was trying to recover too much. I had a 75 in the first round and had almost 24 hours before I played the following day so I got up early on the Thursday and went to Duddingston to do some practice. I managed to iron out a few of the mistakes I had made the previous day and also had a good chat with my sports psychologist Ed McCosh about being more positive going into the second round. I played much better the second day, I started my hitting a good drive and a 9 iron to a foot on the first for a tap in birdie. I ended up signing off with a 69 after having 4 birdies and 3 bogeys, 2 of which were when I hit great par putts just as I wanted but just didn’t drop. There was a lot of positives out of the second day and I met with Ed the next week to get his views on the round and see what he thought I could do to get better consistency with my shots throughout the tournament.
The following week I entered the member pro tournament at my home club Renaissance. It is a serious but fun tournament where a member can invite a pro to play with, the pro’s have an individual tournament and there is a four ball betterball stableford for the teams. I was playing with my mum so I knew her bandit handicap would help us out in the team tournament. I played very good both days despite making a few silly bogeys each round but I had 2 rounds of 69 which I was very happy with, I was good to get 3 rounds in a row under par in tournaments and made me see the benefits of the psychology lessons were having. I putted fantastic the second round and with my mum we managed to win the team tournament on a count-back on the best back 9 holes on the second day. We had 42 points the first day and 43 the second day. I finished second in the individual competition which was nice, Danny Kay had played in a league of his own for the 2 days having two rounds of 65. I hit every single fairways in the first round and hit my new PING I25 irons very well which was nice.
I have been practicing this week a lot and going to the gym and I am very much looking forward to taking all the positives into next week on the Europro Tour at Moor Allerton near Leeds.
Thanks for reading
