Road Trip

I got to my hotel room at 3am on Monday morning after our delay at San Diego airport and I was pleased to get into bed. The Monday qualifying tournament tee times were put back two hours to allow the course to drain, some parts were so wet that we had to be shuttled across paths as the water was so deep. One green keeper would have been in trouble as he must have parked his cart on the side of a lake on Sunday but the lake had burst its banks and the cart had to be tied to a tree to avoid it sinking! I played nicely on an easy course for a round of six under, but it wasn't good enough for one of the three places available, three players had rounds of 63, nine under par.

As it was Super Bowl week in Scottsdale I decided to get out of town and make my way back toward Monterey, I decided to drive instead of fly as I like to drive and I thought it would be nice to see some things on the way. I spent Tuesday driving across the desert to Los Angeles and then Wednesday driving through the mountains to San Francisco.

I played at Hardin Park in the WGC back in 2005 and have always said I would like to return to San Francisco as I had really enjoyed my time there. I revisited Alcatraz, the old island prison in the middle of the bay, I even got to meet one of the few living ex-convicts who had spent time there in the 1960's, he had written a book about his experiences and was in the store to sign copies..of course I bought one!

I continued my tourist trip with a visit to the pier to see the sea lions and have lunch in Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant overlooking Alcatraz. Friday was spent on a bus tour of the city visiting all of the famous areas of town, the Golden Gate bridge and Lombard street, the bendy street that is seen in so many movies.

On Saturday morning I collected my car from Hertz at San Francisco Airport, they are providing our courtesy cars this week, a lovely Audi A6 Quattro, it is certainly a better drive than the little hire car that I had brimming to the roof and it is certainly faster. I drove the two hours down the coast to Monterey. I hit some balls on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, the weather is unfortunately like home, cold, damp and overcast. Sunday afternoon I watched the end of the FBR and then turned over to watch the Super Bowl just like everyone else in America.

I have received emails from nearly all of my old team-mates at Midland Junior College, it has been great to hear from all of the guys and we are planning to catch up at events throughout the year, I'm sure we won't all look as fresh faced as we did back in 1999, check out my photo section.

I'm looking forward to playing this week, as the courses at Pebble beach are world famous and the views are supposed to be even better than at Torrey Pines