Hello!

Hi folks, it's been a while since my last blog but to be honest not much has been going on. I guess now we're into November, the countdown to xmas has started. This should be fun!!

I am currently nursing what was very nearly a serious wound to my my wrist. Yep, I spent last night at A&E following probably one of the worst accidents I've ever had. I was cutting a cardboard box and for some reason I was pulling a stanley knife towards me that slipped and went straight through my wrist. Thankfully, I missed my artery! In fact it hardly bled at all even though it was a large open wound!! Anyways A&E glued and steri-stripped me back together and now I have to keep a large dressing on it for a week. This rules out any swimming this week and due the fact that I can hardly move it without it really hurting, this pretty much rules out the gym and certainly rules out any golf this week!! What a bummer!! Apparently it should be ok after a week or so, so I'm just gonna have to be patient.

Aside from that, I haven't played much golf. When I did play I was hitting a lot of pushes and missing a lot of shots right, mainly from cutting across the ball. This occurs now (from a one-plane point of view) when I go back to my old move of lifting my arms on my backswing rather than getting them behind me. Once this occured to me, I started to play well again almost straight away. It's always tricky to do this, as getting the arms behind me feels like the last thing I should do when I'm missing right. But i'm not missing right from an in-to-out path! It's an open face caused by cutting across the ball. Anyways, I cured it and have this knowledge in the bank for next time I struggle.

I have kept up the gym and the attention to my diet and it's going very well although I have felt myself slipping gradually. When I weighed myself last friday, I was 11 stone 6 lbs. My target is 11 stone exactly by xmas. This gives me just under 2 months to lose 6lbs, an extremely achievable target. But, I need to refocus and re-discipline myself so my eating needs even more care this week (apart from the chinese I had last night!). But, I know what to do - I've just got to do it!!!

Anyways folks, that's from me for now....

Fully Qualified!!!

Greetings. Have been a bit busy over the last week but I have some fantastic news. After 3 long years of hard work, setbacks and successes I am very excited to announce that I have completed my PGA training course. It was a huge relief and a big source of celebrations during my trip to Cardiff last weekend (the Stereophonics were awesome by the way).

That's the big news at the moment. I don't know what it will mean in terms of my career in the long term as I am committed to my dispensing job right now, but it does mean that I can focus purely on playing and practising over the winter. I am going to save money as much as possible over so I can play plenty of tournaments over the winter. I also need to finish my dispensing NVQ soon!! I want to finish this by the end of the year if I can and i am nearly half way through.

That's about all I have to report right now. Life is good, I'm now a fully qualified pro golfer and and can breathe easy. I'll write again soon when I have something more to report....

Here comes the winter...

Morning all. Well, suffice to say the winter weather is drawing in. It's cold, overcast and a bit windy which is a shame as we had a beautiful weekend. Hopefully we still have some nice sunshine to come. Speaking of the weekend, I went to the races at Ascot! It was amazing! What a cracking way to spend a day, and to spend A LOT of money.
Unfortunately I came home £50 lighter having not won a single race! I was gutted. I have a friend in Brighton who gambles full-time and for the most part successfully. He picked my horses for me and I didn't get one result! Even he said the results were crazy, all the outsiders were winning. Oh well, gambling is great when you win but how often does this really happen.

With the exception of last weekend, I have kept up my gym visits and healthier eating and have weighed in this morning. I have now lost 7lbs in 4 weeks and am sitting on 12stone exactly. This is the lightest i've been for a good 3-4 years so I am excited. Just 1 stone to go and I'm there! I have stepped up my swimming and am now doing 40 lengths every session. The first time I did this last week it took me 28 minutes and last night I did it in 20 minutes. I always find that lengths 10-15 are the hardest. Maybe this is the 'wall' that people talk about as my arms always really hurt. However, as I approach 20 lengths I find that this goes and I can swim confidently. I absolutely love to swim so for me this is an easy way to do cardio work. I am doing 100 sit ups every night. I can only do 10 at a time presently which is a bit frustrating as it takes me a while to get the 100 done but I just stay patient and do them.

I played golf at Hollingbury as usual on wednesday and had another astonishing round. After a woeful start and being +7 through 5 holes I had it back to +4 through 16 and then 3 putted and finished with a 78 (+6). I just had a look on my last 3 rounds. How's this for a stat: for the first 6 holes of the last 3 rounds I am a combined +16 and for the remaining 12 holes I am a combined -7! That is crazy and something I definitely need to get my head arounf. I am -10 for my last 3 back nines and +19 for the front nines!
This shows that I am playing phenomenally well and phenomenally terribly. I am fully committed to my 1-plane method now and my understanding improves every day. My ball striking is generally very solid its just the accuracy, particularly with my driver. I think a goal over the winter will be to suss out my tendencies when I play bad so I have more of an idea of how to correct them. I have been to my new club Holtye a couple of times now and am loving it there so I have definitely found a good place to work on these things.

Anyways, I am off to Cardiff tomorrow to see the Stereophonics. I cannot put into words how excited I am about this. I love this band and always have. I had an amazing night last year when I saw them at the O2 so tomorrow should be amazing!!
Anyways, thats about it for now. I'll write again next week...

Holtye!!!

Hey all! It's been another busy week of work and the gym but I am very pleased to say I lost another 2 pounds last week. If I can keep that this week, that's half a stone in 3 weeks which would be brilliant. My weigh in is tomorrow morning, so fingers crossed.
I'm not massively overweight or anything, it's just that like most people I feel that I am carrying a bit too much and therefore want to lose the excess, tone up a bit and get fitter for my golf.

I played Hollingbury yesterday and shot a very nice level par 72. I got off to a slow start again and was +4 through 8 holes. However a hat-trick of birdies from the 10th plus another one saw me home in -4 for the 2nd successive week at Hollingbury. I am feeling great about my golf right now. My iron play is so much better than it has been and my putting has improved too. I cannot wait for next year!!

Thankfully, I have finally sorted out a golf club to play and practise at! I got in touch with Holtye golf club, and after a few exchanges with a very nice secretary I popped down there and sorted it all! Holtye is only a 9 hole course, but it is a great little layout and is in great condition. Also they have a nice big practise area, a big putting green, driving nets and a little short game area! This is everything I need so I am extremely relieved!! In addition, it's fairly near work and is also en-route to Brighton too should I be heading back that way.

So, tonight it's the gym again. I managed to swim 40 lengths of the pool tuesday night so this is my goal going forward, dependant on how hard I have worked up in the gym. Either way, I always do a minimum of 30!

I'll leave it there, I'm off to the Ascot Races this weekend so i'll look forward to that! Tata!!!

Gym and golf....

Mawnin' all! Have got off to a flyer with my new healthy lifestyle. Went to the gym 5 times last week and watched closely what I was eating and lost 2 lbs!! What a great and encouraging start. Hopefully I've found a formula which is working. I'd tell you what it is but I'd have to kill you ;-)

Played golf at Hollingbury last night and had another eventful round. I was rusty, crap and frankly useless for my first 5 holes and it did not feel good to be stood on hole 6 at +7!! It was extremely cold and windy so not the best conditions anyway but after a steady par on 6 I suddenly found my swing again. I played home in -4 from there to shoot 75 in strong winds (including a holed greenside bunker shot for eagle on 17) so this was great. The amount of golf I'm playing now is diminishing very rapidly indeed! I have the next 4 wednesdays off in which I will hopefully play at least 27 holes. After that I will be more or less full time at work and am doing stuff on most of the weekends so to be honest I am considering knocking it on the head for the rest of the year to recharge the batteries and come out focused, committed and keen in January to prepare for my tournament season!!

I got asked yesterday whether I was still considering turning amateur and my simple response is that I will give it until I am 30 and if I am no nearer to my goals and feel like I've given it my best, that will be when I turn amateur again and focus on competing at a high level in that arena.

Not really much else to report just now. I guess things go a bit quieter now in the build up to xmas. My focus for the moment is to get myself down to 11 stone. I would love to achieve this goal and as I said, I have gotten off to a great start. I'll leave it for now. All the best....

Life is good...

Hey folks, hope you're all well. It's been a very hectic couple of weeks but for once I feel very good about life and am feeling very happy and settled in most things. My golf is good. I played very well tonight and my putting was horrific! Despite that, I had the ball on a string and loved every second of it. My ball striking is coming along so well now that I am getting a massive buzz about what could happen next year.

I just love golf. I have done for 16 years now and will do for the rest of my life. I am driven very hard internally and am very clear on what I want to accomplish. The down days are horrible but they never put me off. All they do is spur me on to work harder - although this can work negatively at times as I can sometimes become obsessive. I'm working so hard on enjoying the game and not letting things get me down. I think that when you are given things to deal with in life it completely changes your outlook in all aspects of it. On the days I keep my temper in check, I love to play and I feel much better about myself.

I am going to try and save as much money as I can over the winter for tournaments next year and I am actually going to take charge of myself and start taking myself seriously! I heard a great clip from the golf psychologist recently which simply says that if you don't feel confident, ''ACT AS IF'' you are. I have continually put myself down in front of others about my golf. I guess on some level it takes the pressure off me to play well. But what a negative thing to do, and I don't know anyone else who does this. Well, maybe one person who I should think knows who they are if they read this. So, I am endeavouring to live this way now. I am a professional golfer. I know myself that I deserve and have earned this status so why not start believing it?!

I have joined a gym again and am undertaking what I consider to be a major lifestyle overhaul. I've given up chocolate, I don't have sugar in my tea now, I am cutting the beer down although I like to leave this as a treat as I can do it in moderation anyway and I am exercising hard!! I want to lose over a stone in weight. I want to become stronger and I want to become fitter as this will make me more confident. The fact I'm a bit overweight has made me very self-conscious and to be honest I probably havent taken the care of myself that I should have done. So, this all changes now!!! I'd love to work on my golf technically over the winter but I still don't have anywhere in Tunbridge Wells to do this so I'm not really sure how to tackle that one.

I aim to finish the year on a high. After an extremely low beginning to the year personally, if I can finish the year with my PGA qualification and as a qualified dispenser, I would consider that a successful year. It would be streets ahead of last year. In all honesty if I could erase 2008 completely, I would! But, things are looking up now. I've got some exciting things coming up. Next week i'm going to see my favourite band Coldplay in London and the following week I am seeing the Stereophonics. In addition, I am seeing Ricky Gervais in December so there is a lot to look forward to.

My dispensary job is going to be exciting too over the next couple of months. We are moving in to a brand new surgery so this will be cool!!

Anyways, I've waffled on enough for this blog..........

Exam, The Drift and Guernsey....

Just back from Guernsey. Had a great time. It really is a very beautiful island and is so relaxed and chilled out!! More on that in due course...

Well I've had one very busy week!! Tuesday saw me travelling up to Birmingham for my equipment technology retake, hopefully my final piece for my PGA course!! Yep, if I pass this I realise 3 years of extremely hard work and achieve my PGA qualification! This will be the proudest achievement of my life!!
I think the exam went well. I had to do 2 technology jobs. One of them was to build a club from components ie mine was to build a sand iron with a regular flex that was an inch shorter than standard and had to have 3 layers of grip tape. Then I had to adjust the loft and lie of a golf club. Both of these jobs went well I think and now I can only wait for my results. Fingers crossed, I was extremely nervous but think I coped well.

On thursday I had the south region assistants championships at The Drift. I shot 83 (+10) and 79 (+6) for a +16 total. This was disappointing but I take many positives from the second round particularly. In the morning I didn't play poorly but I scored poorly. There were a lot of sloppy errors, mainly with my shortgame and I putted woefully. It was an 83 that probably should have been 76 ish.
My afternoon round could have been an enormous breakthrough in my confidence. Bearing in mind this is a tough course and is very treelined I was -1 through my first 7 holes and was playing beautifully. I made bogey on my 8th which was a tough hole but then on my 9th I was in a greenside bunker for two on a par 5 and managed to take 4 from there. From then on I had 2 3-putts and another bogey to be stood the par 5 8th (my 17th) at +4. After splitting the fairway I only had two iron and proceeded to block it way right in the trees. This was my only truly bad swing in the whole afternoon round. I felt even worse when I hit my provisional ball to about 20 feet.
I found my first ball in the trees and could only hack out back to the fairway. Even so, my shot smacked a tree and proceeded most unfortunately to roll under a tree root. From there I could only chip out and made double bogey on what should have been a birdie hole. I parred the last and signed off my 79 feeling very short changed in what had been my best tournament round for 2 years. Sometimes the score really doesn't justify how the person had played. But I played well and enjoyed the day.

Anyways, on the friday we set off for Guernsey. I've never been a good flier and was very nervous, particularly when I saw the Dash-8 aircraft we were due to fly on. However both flights were fairly uneventful and I had a great time in Guernsey. I swam in the sea twice which was brilliant. I haven't done this for years and wish I did it more often. I'd love to go back. It would be a great place to live as it is so relaxed. However the lack of golf courses and the fact that it is so quiet means that it may remain as a holiday possibility.

Anyways, after a hectic week all is back to normal now. Back to work tomorrow.....