Played in the opening event in the 2011 Gtour – Race to Cyprus – amateur golf tour today at the De Vere Staverton Park Hotel and Golf Club. The course was okay but not having any course guides and not having played there before I was playing a little blind. A map/layout of the course can be found here…
I had stayed the night before with my parents in Gloucester so the drive up to Daventry was fairly easy and I arrived in good time for the complimentary coffee and bacon rolls’s plus ample time to knock a few balls of the range and practice my putting. The one poor thing about the event – that was completely outside the organisers control – was the need to have hedgehog wheels on any trollies (it had not been needed the day before). That – combined with the small number of hire trollies – meant that many people had to carry cart bags which was not good.
The weather was pretty rank but I was fortunate to have a late morning tee time so although we started in the drizzle, the weather did improve for most of the round but we did finish in the drizzle too unfortunately.
The video below shows 2010 Gtour winner Shane Davies teeing off.
I started badly with a miss hit off the 1st tee and a blob on both the 1st and the 2nd. Things picked up though after that and I made the turn for home with 11 points which was okay. I blobbed the 10th and then managed to shot 7 bogies and a par to dispatch the back nine with 15 points for a total of 26 which wasn’t bad really, especially as I had a competition handicap of 14 (3/4 of 19.1).
My 26 points was enough to get 18th place out of 52 which was a pretty fair and a psoition which I was more than happy with. The winner of the event was Kevin King who scored a whopping 45 points off his 13 competition handicap. Kevin is a GTour regular and is no bandit – he just had a blinding day.
All in all a good day was had.
A full report of the event can be found on the Gtour website here and photos from the event can be found on the Gtour picasaweb site here.
andrew kenyon photography 