'The China Swing'

 

Not much that I can say about my China trip this year. I really tried hard and gave all I got in all the events but crashed in the end. I wouldn't lose sleep for that. I am still keeping my head up high.

I only have myself to blame for not meeting my own expectations. When I got to Silport Country Club, the venue for Volvo China Open, negatives thoughts conquered my mind. Simply because of the super thick roughs ans unbelievably small fairways. It is a bit ridiculous.

True enough I struggled to hit fairways and I realised that i don't have the strength to hack it home. The weather was cruel as well, windy and cold.

It was the same during BMW Asian Open but to add to my misery, the golf course was way too long for me. I cant imagine hitting 3 woods into par 3's and long irons for the second shot into par 4's.

I consider myself to be average in length. To my surprise, my average drives was shorter by at least 15 meters for those 2 weeks. That was what made me struggle all week!

After a lengthy discussion with my manager who happened to visit me in Shanghai, I have decided to try out another driver but with the same shaft. It didn't do me any good either. The ball was not having enough air time because I just can't flex the shaft. In other words I am not strong enough. I need different equipment set up for adverse conditions.

So, again it was a lesson to be learnt for me, the expensive way. I finally found the right driver to use during Pine Valley Beijing Open but this time I was hit with bad luck. The highlight of the week was when I had a chance to meet Jack Nicklaus who came to launch his new 18 holes at the venue. He was awesome, a true golfer.

I got sick and couldn't recover quick enough to play well that week. Again another miss cut. I was assigned to a doctor by the tour but was faced with big time communication obstacle. All the bad breaks just won't go away this time. So I decided to pull out from Korea to recover at home and work on my game. My caddie didn't do me good either since he got sick along the way as well.

I am now working on trying to adapt to tough conditions quicker and hit my iron shots with stronger flight. I need to do this since i hit a few balloon shots now and then. All the European guys and control their ball flights easily in the wind. So it is still new to me. Will keep ypu updated. Till then.