Princes and The Oxfordshire
I have two more tournaments to update my blog about. I played at Princes Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent from the 19-21st of August. It is a fantastic links golf course and was in very good condition apart from the greens being a little slower than they probably should have been. It was a long course playing 7200yards and it was very soft for a links course with a breeze both days making it challenging. The rough was very thick in places so errant shots were penalised pretty severely and you couldn’t always advance the ball much more than 10 or 15 yards.
I played ok both rounds but just hit a few too many shots that were just too far offline, you just couldn’t afford to miss it in certain places and I ended up having two rounds of 76 which unfortunately missed the cut by a few shots. I did however chip and putt very well over the two days and would have holed even more putts if it hadn’t been so slow, I left at least 8 or 9 putts right in the middle of the hole. I don’t think I committed to hitting my driver hard enough so I was often left with too far into the green to hit it close and make lots of birdies. It was nice to get back on a links course and I had lots of positives out of the week to take to the next tournament.
This week just past I went to The Oxfordshire golf club to play the penultimate event of the Europro season at the former European Tour golf course, where players such as Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer had triumphed in previous years. It was a very nice golf course but was 7400 yards and wet so it was playing extremely long, especially the holes that were into the wind. Although they moved the tees up there were several holes that you had to hit 2 really good shots to reach the green in regulation.
I had a great start in my first round by birdieing the first 2 holes and then just missed from 25 feet on the 3rd hole for birdie. I then had a couple of bad holes going bogey-double bogey- bogey on 4,5 and 6. I regrouped though and played the rest of the round in level par for a round of two over 74, including holing a bunker shot on the 15th. The second round I had a solid start, I bogeyed my first hole and then like the day before I birdied the 15th to get back to level par. I had 2 very bad bits of luck on the 16th and 17th which cost me 3 shots, first of all hitting a bunker shot which was going close until it hit the flag and spun all the way off the green into the bunker again, then I hit my tee shot on 17 into a divot from which I hit my second shot into the lake short of the green. I once again used my new found mental strength to play the remaining 10 holes in 1 under par and another round of 74, which unfortunately was 3 shots too many to make the cut.
I am remaining positive and am very much looking forward to the final event of the year at Mar Hall near Glasgow.