Life on Tour in Europe!
Europe here I come! My journey actually started at the Cottesloe Open – an event that combines with the Lyndsay Stephen Invitational. I finished the final round at 5pm then it was all a bit of a blur; a quick shower, bite to eat and straight to the airport to catch my flight to Austria for the first Senior event on the European Legends Tour. Although the weather was cold and wet at the beginning of the week, it was great to get the season started with a solid event. Next a trans Atlantic flight to Dallas to play in the Senior US PGA Championship at the brand new US PGA headquarters Fields Ranch. The US PGA is the one of the three majors on the senior golf calendar and all week we were made to feel very welcome and it seemed whatever we needed was catered for. A great experience and I am looking to forward to my next major in July.
After the whirlwind of three continents in three weeks I had a week off and stayed with extended family in England. A chance to catch my breath, relax and enjoy the start of the English summer.
The next event was the Jersey Senior Open. It was nice to return to La Moye Golf Club which is a lovely links course that provided lots of challenges during the week, varying from gale force winds, fog delays and then beautiful sunshine.
One of the beautiful things about golf is that during your time on tour you can make life long friends. So during my next week off I had a chance to go to Newmarket, England to spend time with an old Australian PGA Tour buddy, Andrew George. Early in my pro career (in the 1990s……….. geez that’s a long time ago!!!) Andrew and I toured together. Suffice to say that my week off was full of reminiscing about the old days with fondness.
The final event in this stretch of tournaments was the Irish Legends at Seapoint Links – which is around 45mins from Dublin. There are many great courses in this area and this course is no exception. The weather was kind to us and after 3 solid rounds I finished 3rd.
So far so good on the golf course ………but things don’t always go to plan. Over the past five weeks I have managed to turn up to rent my car and been told that I booked the car for the day before, left my mobile phone in a car and only realised when I landed in a different country, got to the first tee of a tournament and realised my range finder had disappeared. And of course plenty of flight delays – but we all experience that joy of travelling! For the record I made my tee off by 30 seconds after sprinting around like Usian Bolt to find a replacement range finder. All part of being a touring professional.
