RBC Canadian Open

I arrived late on Sunday night after a delayed flight, I got to my hotel around one o'clock in the morning and went straight to bed. I found out that the weather had been very wet and due to this the course was closed on Monday, which I have never known. Monday was a quiet day and a chance to recover from a long journey.

I went to the course early on Tuesday to play my practice round, but with the sky looking as though the heavens would open at any minute I decided to just walk it with a wedge and putter, and of course my umbrella! The course was in good shape but very wet. There was a nice variety of holes on the course, some long, and some short. There are five holes on the back nine down in a valley with a river running through them, these holes were some of my favourites, on the eleventh you tee off a cliff to a fairway sixty feet below! After some lunch and while dodging the rain I spent the afternoon chipping and putting, you can never practice this too much.

Glen Abbey GC is quite a prestigious club, it was the first course that Jack Nicklaus designed as a solo project, it is also home to the Royal Canadian Golf Association and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.

We started early on Thursday in the rain and I got off to an ok start, I made four birdies on my back nine until the weather closed in and we got taken off the course for thunder and rain. We waited around in the clubhouse for around five and a half hours until we restarted, I spent most of my time in the locker room. When we got back out on the course it was very wet, with puddles in all of the fairways. I caught my second shot a little heavy from a wet lie on my last hole of the day and came up short in the water hazard and made a double bogey. Momentum is so important in a round of golf and the delay didn't help with the good run I was on, but what can you do.

With all of the delays on Thursday our tee time was put back on Friday to allow the afternoon groups from Thursday play both their Thursday and Friday rounds which made for another long day. We finally teed off at 5.35pm and I started badly with two early bogeys, with such a late tee time we were never going to get finished and I ended the day a couple over for the round, even par for the tournament after thirteen holes. The cut looked like it would be one under so I knew I needed to make something happen on Saturday morning.

We returned to finish our second round on Saturday at 7.30am. I only had a few holes left and had to find a birdie, unfortunately a three putt and a missed two footer didn't help my cause and I ended up shooting a round of 73. My total of even par was one too many again to make the cut.

I spent the rest of the weekend hanging around waiting for my flight to Reno first thing on Monday morning. To make my journey a little easier I drove to a hotel near the airport so I could get to my 7.45am flight without a long drive.