Former European Tour golfer John Wade is trying his luck at The Senior Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club. Wade, a vocational PGA Professional, will prepare a daily blog, detailing his experience during one of the Tour’s most prestigious tournaments.

Round 1

After rising at 4:30am it was off to Lytham St Anne’s for my round 1 tee time of 7am. With record temperatures forecast for the whole of the UK it was nice to have an early start. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the most of it!

As quite often happens on these links courses you do your preparation with a certain wind direction and then it blows the other way in round 1, making the opening three holes in particular long and difficult. After battling with my long irons I opened with three bogeys through the opening stretch. I have had experiences in the Open before and one thing I have always found is you never get very comfortable on these courses, with trouble lurking everywhere you look.

I managed to steady the ship around the turn and after a couple of birdies I felt I  was finding some rhythm. However, a really soft bogey on 13 dented things and a run of loose tee shots meant I was constantly out of position on the closing holes. A run of four bogeys to finish was disappointing after scrapping hard, but not having a stock shot to help me out made it hard to find fairways. At least I got some good practice reloading provisional balls several times and giving the spotters some work to do. A round executing shots under this pressure will know doubt help me given my lack of competitive golf recently.

After completing my round I hit the players lounge hard for lunch.

The quality of this event is exceptional and has every base covered, but I must say  the player facilities are as good as I’ve experienced and I’m certainly making the most of those.

The difficulty for me these days is not being able to practice hard when I really need to. A visit to the local physio, a spa and relax watching cricket is more the routine nowadays. A bbq with some close friends from the UK will close out my day and I’m hoping to let go and free wheel things tomorrow if I want to be around for the weekend. Nice to see Dave McKenzie post a nice score today.