South Africa, just the name is enough to conjure up images of wild beasts roaming the planes, where the daily struggle for life is a brutal as it is beautiful, and somewhere that was definitely on my bucket list. Well this year I was lucky enough to be invited over to play in the 2014 South African disabled open and following that to captain the England team in the inaugural world cup of disabled golf, this was to be held at the amazing love golf's bar and Safari resort and was being organised by the South African disabled golf association.
The venue was absolutely stunning however my golf I can't say was the same.
The conditions and the different types of grass in South Africa really confused me, I certainly wasn't used to playing on kukoya grass.
The greens were absolutely spectacular and running around 11.5 on the stimp meter.
À la said my golf was terrible, I only managed to shoot 90, 92, 94. This is absolutely disgusting as I've been playing really nicely before leaving and expecting mid 70s at the most. In my defence the course was spectacularly long and very tough but that certainly doesn't detract from what was poor performance from myself.There were some good performances of note particularly those of the eventual winner Joshua Williams from Canada and South Africa's very own Daniel Slabbert who is always very consistent but just missed out by a couple of shots to Josh in the final round. The experience of playing in South Africa it is absolutely invaluable the way I had to try and adapt to different conditions, and the way that I was unable to adapt to certain conditions for the first few rounds I played.
However better things were to come and the following week was the inaugural world cup of disabled golf where I would be captaining in England team consisting of Darren Gray, ex one arm world champion and relative newcomer to international golf Paul Tookey both very very able single figure handicappers and I knew that they would come out and give it their best.
As an England team we knew from the very outset that getting any kind of results out here was going to be very very tough looking at a level and depth of field of the competing teams.
South Africa, Australia, the USA, and Canada, all had extremely strong teams so we were looking ideally to finish above Sweden to finish at the top European team and anyone else we could pick off along the way, New Zealand were another team that we were looking to have a good battle with an after three solid days we finished just above New Zealand and Sweden in fifth place, and myself I placed in seventh overall on the individual gross score.
Both Darren and Paul both performed admirably and go with the conditions a lot better than I thought they were going to. I had a bad start to the World Cup with another silly 90s as I couldn't hurt but day to day three were much much better with rounds of 79 and 78 to finish are you found that my game was getting back into the swing of where it should've been at the start of my trip.
The 2 weeks I was out in South Africa I will bring back nothing but absolutely fantastic memories.
The golf may have not been fantastic on my part, but the experience of living and playing golf in the middle of the Bush will be something that stays with me the rest of my life.
I will certainly be aiming to head back next year and hopefully put a little bit better performance into the South African open that will do justice to the spectacular beauty and amazing condition that the course is in. You know, that when you stand on a tee and the ideal line for the drive, is on the back side of the fifth zebra from the right, you're playing somewhere just a little bit special.
Until next year South Africa thanks for the memories and I'll get practising. Thanks reading my blog I hope you enjoyed it I'll be updating more very very shortly, now that I can actually get onto my own website and change things, (thanks Hackers).
Until then disabled golf fans Monk out XX
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November 2014
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