Well, the week didn’t quite get off to the best start. After finishing up with some putting practice Sunday afternoon I took a leisurely 2 hour drive back down towards Helsinki airport.
To cut costs I decided to stay 20 minutes away from the airport, as on site airport hotels can be pretty expensive.On arriving at my Sat Nav’s final destination I was struggling to see my hotel…I drove round for 5 minutes to end up back where I started!
And then I spotted it… Hotel Cosmopoli, right above that dodgy looking nightclub!
After dragging my luggage/clubs through a tiny side door and up in a rickety old lift, I arrived to the ‘pleasant’ smell of stale lager and a sticky carpet!
But what do you expect for 60 Euros?
Personally…. normally a bit more but this is Scandinavia!
But to hear from the guy at reception it was only a staff party and only half a dozen of them were there (Sunday evening), I thought it should be a pretty quiet evening.
I squeezed into my box room, resembling what I could only describe as a sauna, and tried to make myself at home.
So after speaking to the family it then came as quite a surprise when the karaoke kicked off at 10pm and played all the way through to 3am with a few Finnish ladies murdering YMCA…
Not a great start with a 5am alarm to get back to the airport, but with two kids at home Laura soon reminded me that sleep is definitely over rated!
Things can only get better…And they sure did!!
On arriving at Geneva airport, players were greeted by the Rolex transfer bus to get us up to the hotel and course for a day’s practice.
The hotel was on the lake in the centre of Geneva, really posh! Decent rooms, decent gym and I was already looking forward to breakfast!
And thankfully Rolex had subsidised the twin room prices to £120 a night – normally around £500… Purely due to the location!!
So after a gym session I got up to the course to check it out…Wow! What a beautiful setting.
On registration we were handed a leather Rolex yardage book cover, a metal ‘calling card’ box from the club with our meal vouchers for ALL week – not just the normal playing days! 
Everything was laid on. I then joined a few players for lunch and handed over my voucher expecting to be pointed in the direction of the buffet…
But instead we had full choice from the à la carte menu – steak, pasta, salad… Anything!
My night in the Alcatraz sauna was soon forgotten!
I played 9 holes Monday afternoon and did some practice, and then that evening was joined by my good friend Mike Ockenden who had planned this week as his annual caddy week of the year!
He sure knows how to pick them! Ha ha!
Tuesday was another practice day; me and Mike joined CT OOM leader Ricardo Gouveia for the back nine.
We were given a free lesson on how to hit a driver super straight!!!!! No wonder he’s already clocked up over €100,000 and guaranteed his Tour card!
It’s a pretty fun golf course to play; lots of holes you have to shape the ball, many tight tree lined holes, but the greens are soft and fast so scoring was going to be good!
That evening we wandered out into the back streets of Geneva to find somewhere relatively affordable to eat, and then an early night as an 8.30am tee off for day 1 followed! 
The format of the Rolex Trophy is pretty unique: day one is a Junior pro-am, where it’s a one pro, one junior pairing…And then the next three days are the normal pro-am format of three amateurs and a professional.
It’s fun, relaxed, but there is still a very big price tag on that winner’s cheque for the CT OOM!
Round 1 I played pretty solid, I had a decent idea of how I wanted to play the course and controlled it pretty well!
In the end I shot 67 (-5) with only one blemish on the card…a nice start to a great tournament!
Round 2 I teamed up with 3 amateur members, one of them playing off +1. He was in his late forties and when speaking to him he said that he actually played off 8 left handed too!
His reason? Because when he got to +2.7 right handed he felt he could not improve much more, so if he started playing left handed he could always find a way to improve!!
They also offered me an incentive of £30 a birdie and £60 an eagle. I had heard teams do this, so to birdie my first hole got me off to a good start!
In the end I only made 3 birdies and matched that with 3 bogeys, so level par; a steady day but nothing too exciting to write about…I ended up T20th at the half way stage!
The team shot -10, with -22 leading!!!! 
Round 3 was the same format again, but this time with a quite miserable bunch of chaps. Only one of them really spoke with me and Mike, despite no language barrier.
I wasn’t playing great, and it kind of felt that they were disappointed to have a pro not making birdies and helping their chances of winning!
Oh well, hopefully I would get a more fun team for day 4… But I did actually birdie 16 and 17 to claw it back to level par and make lunch taste slightly better!!
So a bit of practice that afternoon, some gym work, then one last evening in Geneva hunting down a cheap restaurant before round 4 and an evening flight back to Liverpool!
The hunt for a cheap restaurant didn’t quite pan out…But we went to bed fed and watered and all set for an early start.
Or so we thought! It was a ‘U’ draw with half the field playing in the morning and half the field in the afternoon but with me mid pack I ended up being last out off the 10th at 13.40!
All of a sudden it was a mad rush to the airport for a flight back to Liverpool after I’d played!
Again I played pretty solid; a lot of good golf today but some below average putting on some fast greens meant a disappointing +1 on a trickier day and a -4 total to finish T25th.
From a good start to the week it was disappointing not to make a decent cheque, as it was a good opportunity to jump up the OOM!
Again a massive thanks to Mike for coming to caddy for me and help out all week; it’s always great to have a friend on the bag and I really hope he enjoyed it despite watching some of my very frustrating golf!
I’ve now got a solid week at home to spend some quality time with the girls and work on a few areas of my game!
It’s then a two week trip, first to France and then to Kazahkstan for the CT’s major event! An event that changes the season for so many people – hopefully me!