After the excitement of a 14/14 fairway and 16/18 greens second round of 69, Saturday's 3rd round was a bit of a downer. I made a decent enough start being level par through 11 holes, but made my first bad swing for the week on hole 12 and set off a run of bogeys that I couldn't turn the tide on.

I felt the wind shift on my second shot on 12 and didn't step out and change clubs and proceeded to ease a 7 iron that became all hands as I was frightened to hit at the ball and stopped my body and pulled it left into a dead spot where I had to play away from the flag and accept a bogey. That was followed with a 3 putt on 13, 14 & 17 where I lost my speed of the greens and misjudged approach putts. So round 3 closed out in disappointment with a 5 over score.

The final round was played in difficult conditions with wind blustering the course. I got out of the gates slowly, probably because of a saturday round hangover, with 3 out of position drives on the first 3 holes and resulting bogeys. I played solidly from there however and a nice eagle on the 72nd hole to finish off was nice. A 73 on the final day was no disgrace but didn't gain much ground.

All in all I was quite pleased to jump out of the pro shop and fly across the other side of the world and put in a competitive performance without much practice or play time over the past year. I learned a lot about my game again and just playing has actually got the competitive juices flowing again where I would like to put in the effort and get back out and play some more events and give myself some options to play tournament golf again soon.

My ballstriking was very good for such a long layoff. I didn't hit many poor shots at all and really hit my spots well for the majority with my tee shots and iron approaches. I never recorded worse than a bogey on any hole, which is a feat in itself on such a demanding layout as Victoria GC. My bunker play was great and my chipping was decent. I holed out quite nicely from inside the 6-8 feet range. The only main difficulty I had was approach putting and I believe that was just from the fact I hadn't played much golf and especially not on fast greens.

Lots of positives to be taken from the week and I look forward to what the future may hold again soon. Was a lot of fun.

thanks for all the wishes.....now I gotta get back to diggin in the dirt myself...