Last week I had the pleasure of spending 5 days golfing down in Cornwall with Dave, Pete and Andy from Theale Golf Club. Many thanks to Pete for organizing the week and Dave for driving me down – Andy as always was great company and my main competition for the week! :-)
We played 5 courses in total:
Oake Manor
Trethorne
Launceston
Bowood
We had a competition setup for the four of us during the week for:
Total strokes over handicap
Total stableford
Birdies
Kerchings (birdies, sandy pars etc)
Oake Manor
On the drive down we stopped at Oake Manor Golf Club in Taunton. We had a tee off time just after 8 am so had to set off from Reading at 5! The early start meant we missed all of the traffic around Bristol and even had a chance for a breakfast stop at a service station. Oake Manor was a great course to start the week on. It has a lot of water with big lakes running alongside fairways and streams weaving through the course. Amazingly I managed to start off very well with 40 points! I could quite happily have stayed at Oake Manor all week but we had a tee off time booked at Trethorne for the afternoon so had to set off once again.
Trethorne Golf Club
Trethorne was to be our home for the week. They have accommodation for over 70 people so it is ideal for golf society’s to go to. The weather forecast was for showers on Tuesday afternoon and it turned out to be correct. This was good as it gave me a chance to wear my new FootJoy water proofs, but also bad as they had just dressed the greens that morning which meant large lumps of mud were sticking together on the wet green which made putting impossible. Dressing the greens is a very important part of course maintenance so you can’t complain that is has been done, it was just a bit of bad luck and bad timing with the weather. The good news was the rain helped wash the dressing in, and by the end of the week the greens were in great condition and very fast! The course at Trethorne is great – one of the best I’ve played. The area is very very hilly which makes for great holes that you are hitting up or down to. This always makes you have to think about your shots and where you want to be playing the next one from. I managed to have some great sets of 9 holes while playing at Trethorne, but unfortunately never a great 18 holes all in one go. As this was our base for the week we played it 5 times while moving around to other courses for the other 18 of the day. My stableford scores for the week were 32, 31, 35, 32, 35. The two 35 point round were particularly annoying as on both rounds I messed up the 17th or 18th meaning dropping a point and not playing around to handicap.
Launceston
According to the locals Launceston is a flat course! When compared to Trethorne I can understand this statement, but it still had a number of considerable hills on it. We played here twice and although I enjoyed the course very much, this was my worst scoring course. I managed 34 points on the first day which I was happy with, but only 28 on the day we returned. The second time we played Launceston was Thursday afternoon and it was our third day of 36 holes. Although we had buggies I was pretty knackered both physically and mentally which is the excuse I am using for my lowest score of the week.
Bowood
Bowood was the course I was looking forward to playing the most as it was the only one I had heard of. The course was set in a beautiful location with the par 4 12th and par 5 13th possibly being the two best looking holes I have ever played. The use of huge old trees and water was simply stunning – I could have quite happily parked my golf clubs and sat by the water for the rest of the day. Thankfully my golf round was going well so I was motivated to carry on. I managed 38 points which I was delighted with. I was very happy to get a par on a 585 yard par 5 (with being on the green in regulation!) and also a birdie on the back 9. Overall the course did not disappoint. It was long, hilly, testing, big greens and bunkers with nice fluffy sand in it. Bowood also has accommodation on site so if you are looking to travel down to spend a week there it is definitely a place to consider.
Overall
We all had a great time down in Cornwall which was thanks to great courses and the hospitality at Trethorne. I was very happy with how I played overall considering I was playing the courses for the very first time – especially the 40 and 38 points at Oake Manor and Bowood. Due to these 2 good rounds and playing relatively consistently for the other rounds I was lucky enough to win all the mini competitions we had going during the week! Although I was really happy to have played so well and won it was definitely a bigger bonus to have great company, great courses and great weather during the week. I kept stats for 7 of the 9 rounds during the week – here are the averages:
Fairways in reg : 67%
Greens in reg : 40%
Putts : 35
Average Stableford Points : 34
As you can see from the stats driving was definitely the strong part of my game during the week and I’m pretty happy with the greens in regulation number. The average of 35 putts a round does make it look as though my putting was woeful, but the part of my game that let me down during the week was definitely my short game. I simply didn’t get up and down enough times during the week which led to a high number of putts per round. We were constantly playing golf so I didn’t get a chance to practise par 18 at all. I think being able to do this once a day would have certainly helped – although I’m still very happy with the scores overall based on the fact that these were away courses being played for the first time.
We all had an excellent week – and this was great preparation for the upcoming season which starts properly this weekend.