I have been playing golf quite regularly, almost every weekend, in the last 4 years. I enjoy playing the game and have improved quite a lot over the course of this period. I am currently playing on a handicap of 21 strokes, which I hope to reduce to around 15 over the course of my DP years. Although I’ve been playing Golf for quite a while, I only began playing competitively recently. Back in August, I participated in the HSBC Junior Open and posted my best score on the Colombo course: 84, 13 over par. For the Scanwell Logistics Open, which was set to take place on the 17th of December 2018, my goal was to play a few strokes under my handicap but also to try and do better than last time.

I played a few holes on both Saturday and Sunday before Monday the 17th, and I was feeling quite confident in terms of the accuracy and consistency of my play. I knew that I would definitely undercut my handicap, but I wasn’t too sure that I would do better than my last round at the HSBC Open. Nevertheless, I woke up bright and early around 6AM and arrived at the course around 6:30AM, ahead of my 7:54AM tee time. I hit a few balls in the driving range, but didn’t have much time to practice my chipping and putting. I would regret this later on during my round…

When 7:54AM came, I teed off and began the round. The first hole was not too bad of a start: I drove to the fairway, hit a rescue to the edge of the green, and secured a chip and two put to finish at a bogey. The consequent holes were where things started to go downhill. In the second, third and fourth holes, I played quite well off the tee and on the fairway. However, when I reached the green, my putting was extremely poor. I posted double bogeys in all three of these holes due to too many putts on the green. Thereafter, I managed to pull a few conservative bogeys in holes 5, 6 and 7. When it came to the 8th hole, I topped my drive straight to the pond ahead, but still managed to post a double bogey by reaching the green in two shots and finishing with two putts. When I got to the 9th hole, I was already 11 over par and things were looking pretty bleak. Looking at my score card, I decided to take it easy and play the next few holes without worrying too much about my score. That’s when things started to turn around. I picked up a 6 iron on the 9th hole par three and got a few feet within the pin. From there, I pulled off a one put and a birdie to finish the first 9 at 10 over. Recalling that I was at only 4 over at this stage of the HSBC open, I decided to focus on undercutting my handicap rather than undercutting that performance.

After the birdie on the 9th hole, the back 9 wasn’t too bad. I drove straight down the fairway on the 10th, but mistook my line on the second shot and ended up in the bunker eventually leading to a bogey. I drove well, and hit a great second shot to the edge of the green on the 11th hole, and was ready to post a par, but I mishit the chip and ended up with a bogey. On the par 4 12th hole, I hit a stellar shot off the tee and was definitely in the running for a par or birdie, but once again the short chip was miscalculated and I ended up with a bogey. The rest of the round was pretty much the same story on repeat, with the exception of the 14th and 15th holes where I shot pars. I would play great shots off the tee and fairway that would set me up in a good position, but I would then mess up around the green with my chipping and putting and end up with no better than a bogey. My back 9 performance was definitely much better than the front 9, but I still ended the round with a poor score of 89 and 18 over par. Since the competition wasn’t too stiff this time around, I ended up at 4th place.

Although I managed to undercut my handicap of 21 by 3 strokes, I felt that I could have done much better. The fact that I ruined so many great chances with poor chipping and putting was very frustrating. The final score of 89 would have been at least 7-8 strokes lower if I did a better job in the short game. Nevertheless, despite the poor chipping and putting around the green, I am proud of the rest of my performance. I missed only the one drive on the 8th hole and missed no iron shots on the fairway. My goal is to carry the momentum in this area of the game forward, and work hard on my chipping and putting in the weeks to come and be in a strong position when the Junior Open comes on the second of January.