The sun is back, the shorts & legs are out, lets play golf...

Just a little catch-up for my followers, not a great deal has been going on due to some work getting in the way and with so many golfing outings coming up, it's that kind of time when it's important to build up the brownie points at home as those golfing trips and away days are about to come about thick and fast!

I'm still working on and trying to introduce the changes my assistant Pro has shown me and they are definitely starting to pay dividends, in that, I no longer cut or fade the ball which on my course can be very destructive, well it's equally destructive if you hook it too much also but hey, I just don't like the fade come slice shot shape and so it's almost gone from my game now, although I wouldn't mind having it back on demand for those left to right doglegs, but we can't have everything.

 Two weekend strokeplay competitions have seen me me pick up another couple of 0.1's so I've got a shot back as I now sit on 17.5 (18), I'm not overly concerned as I constantly hear that you should only play to your handicap or better 33% of the time, so with only 5 comps under my belt since my 3 shot cut, I'm confident of a couple of cuts before the season is finished, and if they trigger an ESR (extended score reduction) then getting down to 15 or lower is a real target and that's without putting too much pressure on myself to achieve.

Only played 1 B-team match which was away to Olton, it's a great course in the suburbs of Solihull and all the rumours of selling up for housing, is, well rubbish! The course was in excellent condition and the food and company as always was superb.  I played very well, in fact I finished below handicap with a nett 70 and even though I came out the traps flying with a series of pars, I was 3 down from the off!  I'm starting to feel the wrath of the higher handicapper, although technically I'm still one myself, but giving shots away to 24 handicappers and then watching them have a purple day where my pars barely got a half and rarely won a hole, well it's strange, frustrating and funny combined now being on the other side of this situation, which I used to enjoy myself.

I just played in a 3-man team Texas Scramble with my normal weekly playing partners, were a good mix of handicaps ranging from 7 to myself at 18, 5 drives each and 3 wild and we had 8 shots.  We were having a very steady round, bagging birdies and pars until we had our 1 and only bogey on the 15th leaving us with a very respectable finishing score of a nett 61 points.  Back to the clubhouse for the banter and deconstruction of the round over a few beers and then the captain picks up the microphone and announces the results, "in 4th place with 60.8 points" Noooooo, we missed out by 0.2 points, just 1 putt, or that bloody single bogey on the 15th, Arghhhhhhh!

The usual suspects whom we never see at weekends in Medals or Stableford competitions took the spoils with a nett 56 points! I'm not bitter ;-)

I'm entertaining a friend today who is visiting my course for the first time as it's going to be our home course in the League of Dubai Matchplay Pairs Competition and he needs to familiarise himself with it, it's playing great and looking fantastic so hopefully he will be suitably impressed, he will be joining me in our Sunday morning sweep/roll-up.

Then it's off to play at Beau Desert in an Open on the Bank Holiday Monday, it was funny on Friday when my wife asked what we were doing together over the Bank Holiday weekend, I explained my golfing arrangements and then asked "what was she doing", it didn't go down too well and I got "the look"!

Cheers.