So, ITALY didn’t go to plan, missing the cut by one; I really dread to think how many cuts I’ve missed by one over the years…let’s not even think about it!
It was a disaster trying to get home, too; limited flights and most of them sold out meant it cost €400 to get back Saturday morning, and that was an indirect flight too!
So, on landing, my clubs didn’t make the tight connection – which was half expected – but with Open Qualifying Tuesday they needed to show up sharpish!
They arrived Sunday, thankfully, and I headed off Monday afternoon to Hollinwell for some Open Qual preparation!
I hadn’t played Hollinwell for years and, wow, it’s in my top 5 UK courses for sure, I loved it!!!
I played solid too, and, bar a few mistakes, I had a real shot to qualify for my second Open Championship.
71, 72 (T11th) for -1 total with -5 getting into a playoff!
After some family time and some practice, it was bags packed again for a two-week stint in France and Austria on the Challenge Tour.
My admin is normally pretty good – I’ve found some good value travel over the years and have always been pretty well organised…so what happened this week was rather strange!
Luckily, three days before flying, when trying to book a hire car, I realised I’d booked the wrong flight for me and Jacob – the right flight time but a week later….
Thankfully, I could change those at a little cost, but then to turn up at Manchester airport to park the car for two weeks and realise I’d only booked one week and my reservation actually started the following Tuesday…oh dear!!!!
They let us in, and, for some reason unknown to us, even let us have a free week’s parking prior to the booking start! Phew!!
So, a bit of luck, but that wasn’t the end of it! On landing in Paris, we headed off to the car hire office for me to joke “wow, can you imagine if I messed this up too!”.
And I bloody had, a week later too!!!! Thankfully I managed to cancel the booking, we just then had to pray we could get a car on the day…never that easy.
So, at the Enterprise Car desk the man was extremely helpful but then these words followed “sure, we have a Fiat 500 available, it will be €638 for the five days”.
You can imagine the expression on my face!!!!
We managed to book one online with the same company for a few hundred euros and that was damage limitation…we were on the road and headed for Le Vaudreuil.
It’s a pretty good course in France, extremely tight, tree lined, long rough and definitely the smallest greens we will play all year!!
I shot +1 in the first round which was on the cut line – I played ok but again it left me some work to do on day two.
In the afternoon it got really windy, nice to keep the temperature down, but made it very tricky. For 8 holes I battled well but on that green felt the turning point, I missed my good birdie chance and then made double down the next hole!
I know this is golf and full of ‘ifs and buts’ but I could make that birdie on 8 and go back to +1; I didn’t and then made double on the next and fell back to +4.
Ouch!!
So, on the back foot and chasing it, I made an easy birdie on 12 but didn’t give myself the chances down the stretch, comfortably missing the cut and it was a weekend of practice and some running through the woods to clear my mind!!
As ever, a de-brief of the week and then I turned my attention to Austria with a fresh mind set and another opportunity!
Let’s do this!!!!!!
