Airil's Column

AIRIL'S JOURNAL

5th February 2007

It was really nice to start playing again after taking a week off since Pakistan Open. It was indeed a memorable week for me. The food poisoning right after the game did not spoil my celebration mood.

The reception was overwhelming. Friends, family members and not forgetting sponsors called in to congratulate over the feat. I am really appreciative over the gestures. Now it is time to move on to bigger things.

Philippines Open is the third event on the Asian Tour calender and I have decided to play in order to better prepare myself for the big one, the Malaysian Open. Wack Wack Country Club again hosted the event this year with a bigger purse.

As I expected it was a tough course to play well. The greens were really tricky and to make things worse, it was windy and dry. Wack Wack has a few signature holes I might say especially the finishing holes. It is very common to see players dropping shots and losing the tournament on these few holes.

You just cannot hit it past the pin with your approach shot and leave yourself with a 6 footer downhill putt because you will end up with a 15 footer return putt. It was that tough and to have a few 3 putts per round is acceptable.

I shot 73 71 76 73 to finish tied 28th. I was quite satisfied with the performance in preparation for the coming events which are the Malaysian Open and Indonesian Open back to back. The Philippines Open was won by Frankie Minoza who needs no introduction to Asian golf. He has won so many events in Asia especially in Malaysia. He played really well and deserved the honor.

Malaysian Open starts on thursday and I am really looking forward to give my best and better my perfomance from recent years. Saujana was not the nickname The Cobra for nothing, I hope it won't have a piece of me during the event. So till then.

25th February 2007

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26th February 2007

Guess what, I am really beginning to enjoy playing fulltime on the Asian Tour by now. Just completed taking part in the Enjoy Jakarta Astro Indonesia Open 2007 and my oh my, it was fun. So many Malaysians live and work in Jakarta and that certainly made me feel at home. Jakarta is very similiar to KL except for the unbelievable traffic congestions.
The golf course is very beautiful and has two characters. I played a practice round with Simon Yates of Scotland who now resides in Thailand, and all we can talk about was how low the cut was going to be. We even had a wager going on to what the winner will shoot. Both of us agreed at 20 under par and we were way of the mark.
The straight forward and easy golf course turned out to be very windy and tricky. The rough just grew longer during the week. All the water hazards just came into play and swallowed 3 of my golf balls. I shot 70-69-74-71 to finish at par and tied for 23rd. It was my best finish in a joint sanction event so far. The bad round came on the third day as it was the trickiest day of the week. Being paired with Thongchai didn't help either. Thongchai is definitely long off the tee but struggled as well on the greens.
He is the best playing partner that anyone could ever wish for. The last time I played with him was way back in 1998 when we were still amateurs.
The course set up was really fair as compared to Saujana 2 weeks ago. We can actually see more Asian players competing with the Europeans this time. The pin positions were reasonable as well.
The Asian Tour will have 3 joint sanction events coming up starting with Johnnie Walker Championship, Singapore Masters and TCL in Sanya. I will be skipping TCL as it will be too tiring to play 4 events in a row since I am taking part in Motorola Ria Bintan Open right after TCL. So till then.

NAME	AIRIL RIZMAN BIN ZAHARI
AGE	29 YEARS OLD
COUNTRY OF BIRTH	MALAYSIA
EDUCATION	BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (HUMAN DEVELOPMENT) UNIVERSITY PUTRA MALAYSIA