Tom Gandy Spring Update

Since I last blogged, I’ve been back in competitive action (finally!). Last time I competed was way back in October, so it’s felt a long, long time coming.

I was out in Dubai for the Clutch Tour’s International Series. The first event was at Al Hamra Golf Club, near Ras al Khaimah. It was great to be out playing and the conditions were immaculate, so it felt a real privilege to just get back out there. I didn’t play anywhere near my best, I was nervy to start with and made many rusty decisions and even when I made the right decision I wasn’t able to execute the shot I was trying to hit. This was to be expected I would say with the level of action I’ve had over the last five months.

The goal of this trip was to simply get active again, practice, play and be better prepared for when my season takes off in late April. So I was not panicked by a poor performance, I grew into that first event the more I played, so I thought it was actually quite encouraging.

I then managed to get a game with Stuart Shilcock from IFGL in Dubai who very generously invited me to play at his club, the Dubai Creek Golf and Yacht Club. It was great to catch up with Stuart and we won our game against Stuart’s other two guests – nothing tastes better than a free lunch!

For the remainder of the four day break between the two events I was based at the Els Club, another brilliant golf facility in Dubai. I really tried to take advantage of the weather and brilliant facilities, and put some long, but very productive practice hours in. 

These practice sessions felt like they really paid off when I moved to the final event of the trip at Al Zorah Golf Club. I opened the tournament very differently to the first one, with a very efficient -4 score which put me in a tie for 2nd place. I continued to play good, patient golf around a fairly difficult venue with firm greens and difficult pin placements. Frustratingly, in both rounds 2 and 3 I let the good work go a little towards the end of the rounds as I didn’t convert chances and dropped some simple shots. It culminated in a tie for 12th place to finish the tournament, which if I’m honest, exceeded my expectations of this trip.

I left Dubai tired after a long two weeks in the heat and non-stop golf action, very inspired, itching to get to the next event and just fully back in love with competitive golf. I was very encouraged by many aspects of my game, seeing lots of positive signs in many things I have worked on in my off-season – the way I conducted myself, my ball striking, short game. There’s still many bits to improve upon, of course, there always will be. But I now have a period of 4 weeks or so until I’m next in action, so I look forward to making a plan and getting to work on improving some bits so that I can hit the ground running when the season gets fully underway!