Harry's Sunshine Tour

JUNE/JULY 2023

Hi TGC,
Been a couple months since I updated you so thought I'd do another entry. After my last blog I came back to England for 5 weeks which was great. It's the longest period of time I've spent in the country for almost 2 years and the weather was perfect. I got to play Captains Day with Chris Wyatt and we had a great laugh and it was nice to see how the course is developing. I really feel like the changes in the last 5 years have made the course a lot more interesting, especially on the back nine. The addition of a par 5 at the end of the round is a feature which you find at most good golf courses across the world. It was nice to see so many old faces and thanks to those who always come up to me and ask how I'm getting on. 

I spent the majority of my time in England playing different courses across the country, practising and doing golf days. The highlight was a golf day hosted by Chubby Chandler at JCB Country Club which I managed to win with a nice 66! He's a great guy who has some incredible stories from his time in the golfing world as I'm sure you can imagine. 

            

I spent the last two weeks of my stay in the gym and doing a lot of speed training. I've figured that I can still gain another 20 yards off the tee without sacrificing much accuracy. Driving the ball is the strongest part of my game but I know I can get even longer which is such an important theme in todays game. I managed to get my club head speed up to 130 mph and ball speed around the 190 mark. This doesn't mean that I will then swing it like this in a tournament but it means that my normal on course swing will step up a few mph because of what my body knows it is capable of. 

I returned to South Africa feeling really refreshed and excited to get going again. I have to concentrate on The Altron BigEasy Tour in order to regain my sunshine tour card and it's important I get off to a good start. In the first event I shot 70,73 in a really strong field of 120 players (top 30 cut) to just miss the cut. I was pretty frustrated but my game felt good and I was excited about how long and straight I was driving it. The following week we played at a narrow and fiddly course in freezing conditions (winter time). I shot 72,67,69 to end up finishing in 2nd place and a really important result for the order of merit. After two events I'm sitting at 4th adjusted on the Order of Merit with the top 12 at the end of the season getting their Sunshine cards.

I will be spending the next couple of weeks really focusing on my wedge play which is consistently a weakness of my game. I am going to go back to using a clock face style of getting different distances out of each wedge and see how that goes. I find that trying new things in my game normally yields quite good results for me as I get very interested and invested in the process of it which, in return, makes me work harder at it.
Hope everyone is enjoying their golf this year and I'll see you all when I'm back hopefully in late August for DP World Tour Q school which I've never played before. 

All the best 
Harry

APRIL 2023

We are coming to the end of the sunshine tour season and I need two good finishes in the last two events to keep my tour card. It hasn't been the rookie season that I was hoping for but I've been pretty unlucky by missing a lot of cuts by 1 including a DP world event in Mauritius which is very costly on the order of merit.

                                                                    

The first event was in Euphoria , a tough course in the middle of the Bushveld. We saw all sorts of wildlife on the course and there were bugs everywhere. On our first night our balcony got swarmed with giant wasps and they wouldn't leave. It was a horrendous week weather wise and we kept having to stop start. One whole day of play was cancelled and it got reduced to 54 holes. I had to play 3 holes at 5pm on the third day and then finish off the rest at 6 am which was tough. I played ok and holed a good birdie putt on the last to make the cut by 1. I finished the week at level par to come 40th on a tough course.

The following week was at my home course Dainfern and the final event of the season. I had really high hopes here and was hoping to contend. I regularly shoot between 7-10 under at Dainfern in practise and have a club handicap of +8 there so was trying to play as freely as possible. I was quite nervous during the lead up to the week and not sleeping at all knowing I had to have a good week to keep my card. I shot a nervy bogey free round of 3 under in round one not playing how I wanted to but just getting it around and then followed it up with another round of bogey free 6 under to be 9 under at the half way mark. The scoring was seriously low and I knew I had to keep going lower. My third round I played poorly again in parts but grinded out 3 under to sit at -12 going into the final round. I wasn't sure what I needed to shoot final round to keep my card as it depended on others aswell so I tried to just play as well as possible and not think about it. Unfortunately I shot 3 over and ultimately just missed out on retaining my tour card by a few quid which was brutal. It was a great week having home support and all the members out there cheering me on but it was probably the most deflated I've been after a golf event in my career. Everything happens for a reason and I'll still get sunshine tour invites and if I do well enough in them I can earn my card back quickly. Alternatively, I can get my card back by coming top 12 on the development tour order of merit which I will focus on. This year I'll have more time off to work on my game and in the gym so that my back doesn't hold me back. It is getting better all the which I am proud of and I'm learning what aggravates it with the help of my trainer Gavin Groves. I will also be able to play some events abroad which I haven't done for a long time. The whole year has flown by and it was my first real experience of playing on a proper world tour with travelling week in week out against world class players. The standard on Sunshine Tour is immense and easily as good as The Challenge Tour.

It isn't glamorous and is exhausting living out of a bag which I am used to by now but I wouldn't change it and am extremely lucky to be doing what I do! My professionalism improved a lot this year but there are a lot of changes in my game I need to make. The weaknesses only get highlighted when I'm under pressure in tournaments so I need to work more on gaining really technically sound fundamentals so that even under pressure I can perform. This is something I neglected growing up as I didn't have access to good coaching and only in the last year have I invested in a full time coach. In practise I feel like I am almost as good as anyone but haven't quite been able to let go during events. However I know that I am capable of shooting the great scores I just have to unlock that potential and it is something I have talked about with my coach.

Sorry for the essay but I think it's a good way for people to understand the mental side of pro golf. 

I'm back in a few weeks to sunny Tiverton and hope to see as many faces as possible!! Hope you're all well
Harry

MARCH 2023

For the third consecutive week I played a pre qualifier for one of the bigger European Tour/ Challenge events that I don't get directly into. These Pre Qs have 10 qualifying spots in a field of about 70-100 players. I shot 2 under in tricky conditions to finish T6th but had to go into an 8 man playoff to determine who would get through. Unfortunately I missed a 7 foot birdie putt to get through. The week before I also missed out by just one shot.

                   

I then played a proper Sunshine Event at Centurion Golf Club. I shot 3 under for the two rounds and missed the cut by 1. Golf is hard and even consistently shooting under par at this level isn't good enough.

There was a week off on the Sunshine Tour Schedule and I was set to play a mini tour event. However last minute I got an invite into a good African event in Harare, Zimbabwe. I quickly booked a flight and set off the next day.

Nothing really seems to work in Zimbabwe and even makes South Africa look fully functioning. They have a constant problem with power and there are regular black outs. They work in RTGS (local currency) which is about 1000 to the dollar aswell as using USD. The price of everything changes almost daily as the rate fluctuates so much. The roads are pretty bad to drive because of the potholes which means people are always diving between lanes in order to miss them. The people however are brilliant despite the crippled economy and make such an effort and are extremely proud to be Zimbabwean which is awesome. During the event I played with lads from Zim, Ghana and Namibia.

                     

I got off to a terrible start and was in 35th after round 1. Royal Harare is a demanding golf course and you can't miss many greens. Fortunately a solid second round including 8 birdies and a decent final round meant I climbed back up to a final position of 13th which was respectable and made the trip worthwhile. On the final night after the tournament the local guys took us to a bar called Tin Roof which was "¦a tin roof! It was epic and the whole town seemed to be in there!

See you next month!

Harry