I arrived into George airport on Monday afternoon, got picked up in a car and driven the 10 minute trip to the hotel. I played a practice round on Tuesday with Paul Lawrie and got a nice feeling for the course, it's a links but not a true links, but it kinda plays like a links but not quite! I played OK during the week but made too many silly mistakes which cost me, I had a decent start and finish but not much to write home about in the middle, I finished 30th which was a bit disappointing but what can you do. One of the main talking points of the week was the weather, Thursday saw a high of 43 with humidity, while Saturday was a high of 15 with wind and rain. I have never been so happy to see Saturdays weather after baking earlier in the week.

I caught a couple of flights to arrive in Dubai Monday morning and headed to Abu Dhabi, I don't have a great record in the desert and have never really finished that high up but was hoping that this year would be different. What can I say about Abu Dhabi, a great city, a great hotel, a great course but spoilt in my opinion by the set up. Growing the fairways in makes the rough thickest at the side of the fairway and thus penalises drives that just miss the target more than the ones that are wildly off line and on a 7600 yard course with firm greens makes it a little bit silly. Never the less I didn't play great and really struggled off the tee and with the rough, I shot a pair of 75's and had the weekend off.

Congratulations to Robert Rock on his second European Tour Win this week, to hold off one of the strongest fields of the year in style is a great effort. Rocky works on his game harder than nearly anyone on Tour and its nice to see him get his rewards for his work.