After a good weekend’s practice in France I knew my game was not in a bad place!!
So, a flight back to East Midlands on the Sunday evening, then the horrible journey 3 hours South down the M1/M25 to my manager’s house for the evening.A lunch time flight from Gatwick was sociable but the 5 hour flight to Istanbul with a 1.5 hour connection before a 6 hour flight to Almaty was certainly not fun!!
Then with the 5-hour time difference I landed around 4.30am.
Thankfully I managed to sleep squashed up for most of the 2nd flight with some help from the cheap Boots sleeping tablets!
We then waited an hour for our taxi, arrived at the hotel, showered and headed to the golf course for a practice round!
(If you can believe it, the hotel this week cost £80 for 6 nights with breakfast!)
With the time difference it was like teeing off at 3am in the morning back home!!
So after playing, we had some lunch, a little bit of practice, and then had the struggle of trying to stay awake to keep on the Kazak time zone! We managed it!
Wednesday we got up early to fit nine holes in before the pro-am. The course was great! The greens were pure and the semi rough was brutally long!
If you missed a fairway by a few yards, it was tough to find the green! And with firm fairways, it was tricky to find the fairways first!!
But that’s how European Tour Golf is set up, so it’s nice to play golf where you do get rewarded for good golf!
Over the weekend I made a few changes to my putting, and again the last two days in Kazakhstan I made a few more. It’s been an ongoing project trying to make some progress on the greens….
…and the first two rounds this week I got my rewards which felt nice!
Round one I played solid, and on my back nine holed putts for birdie from 12, 15, 25, 10, 20ft to shoot 69 (-3)
That got me on the leader board at one point, so it was a nice start to the tournament!
Day two my game was a bit on edge; I struggled to let it go off the tee and you can’t guide it round this course! But again some good putting kept me in there and I ended the day shooting 74 (+2)
So a -1 total but safely negotiated the weekend for the 3rd time out of 3 trips to Kazakhstan for the CT Major event of the year!
Let’s hope the weekend now brings a lot more fun golf and plenty birdies!!!
The day’s highlight had to be the wedding that we had to move off the 9th fairway, our last hole, before we could tee off…..
Well, round three didn’t bring many birdies and the typical golfers’ saying of the day was “I actually played better than I scored” but I guess that means nothing when you still sign for 74 (+2).
As punishment, it was gym and run time in 30 degrees heat with the Kazak altitude! The last round I fought for every penny as you never know when it might count! Plus I would rather it be in my bank than someone else’s!
I putted pretty nice again – I really feel I’ve found something to go forward with for the rest of the year and in the end I shot 71 (-1).
I was -3 after ten and just a couple of bunker visits held me back but my game felt good!
I then had the mammoth return journey to deal with followed by the drive back from Gatwick!
But I’ve got these happy little faces ready to welcome me back so it’s well worth the effort! 
Also, two weeks at home to look forward to before the next event in Rome!!