Qatar Masters

It was another quick flight from Bahrain to Qatar, literally the quickest flight I’ve been on, around 25 minutes in the air to be exact. I had the pleasure of rooming with Travis this week and luckily I had my earplugs handy.

We played 9 holes on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday with some of the Australian pros who I have gotten to know over the past couple weeks. The Doha Golf Club was a beautiful golf course and it played really well. The rough was just long enough to be trouble and the greens were nice and firm. It was very playable from the fairway but you could miss by a little and feel like you were playing a different course.

The first round was a grind, we were out early and needed to make the most of the calm conditions as the course really dried out and got windy on the afternoon. I feel like I had my driving back and drove the ball really well both days, finishing around 40th in strokes gained driving for the week. Where I really struggled was my irons which I need to work something out with, I ended up losing 3.5 shots to the field with my irons, somewhat of an outlier round for me which you just can’t get away with. I opened with 1 over par which put me in an average position going into the 2nd round which I knew would be a little tougher.

The second round was quite windy to begin with and I got off to a solid start on the back 9 which was my first 9, I was 2 under through 9 after rolling a few good putts in for pars and then a couple birdies back-to-back. I felt good going into the front 9 and didn’t play that bad, I 3 putted from 43 feet on the 3rd which was in a very tough spot, made a good save on 6 and unfortunately skulled my wedge shot over the green on 7 and just slid the 10 foot par putt past. After a good par on 8 I needed a birdie up the 9th to make the cut. I wedged it to 16 feet and missed it on the low side. Not a good feeling to miss the cut by one after fighting so hard with some errant iron shots.

I feel like my game is close and different parts are just firing at the wrong times. I know if everything fires at the right time I can contend and play some good golf I just need to be patient.

I have an off week in Dubai after this week and before Kenya where I’ll be playing at the Jumeirah Golf Estate on the Fire & Earth courses. I’m looking forward to having a week to practice and hang out.

Thanks for all the support, Sam.