More news from the Alps Tour with Tom Sherreard, this time playing in the Valle d’Aosta Open. You can read more about Tom’s GoKart blog here.
Tough school
So my travels have recently taken me to a small town in the Dolomites of Italy named Breuil Cervinia. Now I’m not a skier but I imagine those in the skiing loop would see this as ski heaven. The course is located 2000 plus metres above sea level, and to be honest maybe golf was an afterthought to try to attract more people to this ski resort. However, courses like this are a good thing; you can disregard at least 50% of the field, due to the fact they will be so annoyed by the condition of the course. The tournament became a battle of attrition, trying to fight the course and the weather conditions, culminating in snow on the last day… (31st of August I might add). In the end I finished tied 8th on a total of -3 for the tournament. Although this was a good finish I actually moved down in the order of merit to 10th position; I guess you have to play well to stay near the top. My preparations now turn to the first stage of European Tour Q school which I will be playing at Hardelot starting 25th September. You can follow my progress at europeantour.com.
Tip for the month
Warming Up: As promised my blog will come with useful tips to help your game. This edition’s tip is on warming up. I still play with a lot of amateurs either in pro-ams or just back home, and I can’t tell you the amount of guys that don’t warm up or prepare in any way at all. Guys that come out at the weekend after working 5 days a week and can’t understand why they play the first 9 so poorly. My tip is simply to hit 20 balls before playing; just get the muscles used to what they are about to do for the next 4 hours. If you don’t have time for this, just do some stretching, warm up the muscles, just with normal stretches. This may get give rise to a bit of banter amongst your usual 4 ball but when you’re taking the money on the last green you will be happy you put up with the abuse.