One of the biggest events of the year is the Australian Open played this year at the Lakes Golf Club. The course was presented magnificently but with testing conditions, presented quite the challenge for the open rounds of the tournament.
The first round saw our group greeted with 50 km/h winds (~30mph) with some patchy rainfall throughout the day. Needless to say, it was a grind in those conditions around what is already a tough course. I had worked extremely hard all day and was 3 over standing on my last hole, the 9th without a birdie on the card. I hit a good tee shot that caught the left edge of the green but unfortunately rolled off the left side of the green into a deep swale, short-sided to the back-left flag location. From there it took me 3 attempts to get the ball on the green followed by a two putt and giving me a triple bogey 6 on my last hole for a disappointing 6 over par, 78. It is an unfortunate part of this game that we as golfers are measured solely on our score as I felt I played much better than my 78 suggested, but that is just part of this challenging journey of professional golf. I knew I had some work to do on the second day.
Round 2 conditions were slightly improved on the first day, though still fairly windy we were spared the rainfall for the most part. I again played very solid but could not seem to convert very many of the opportunities i gave myself to extract some birdies from the course. In the end I signed for another disappointing 74 and would miss the weekend action.
It was a disappointing end to a long 7 weeks stretch with a mixed bag of results. My next event is the Australian PGA at RACV Royal Pines on the Gold Coast.
Tim Stewart Golf 