June 26, 2012

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland -

The California Golden Bears have popped over to Scotland from Ireland to compete at the British Ladies Amateur at Carnoustie Golf Course. Sophomore Nicola Roessler reports today from Scotland.

Welcome back everyone to our Europe blog ! Today the British Ladies Amateur Championship finally started ! After traveling from Ireland to Scotland on Saturday we played two practice rounds before we started playing today. Traditionally the first tee time of this tournament is at 6:30 am and today we had Danie tee off in this group. As bad as 6:30 sounds these tee times are very popular because it is usually not as windy yet and the greens are still smooth. The last tee time today was at 3:14 pm with none of us in this group but Jackie and Jo Ee still had a bad draw for today teeing off in the afternoon and catching the rain for the last couple holes.

The Carnoustie Golf Course is probably the most famous course in Scotland after St. Andrews, which is only about 45 minutes away. It is a par 72 championship course and it has everything that you can think of when you hear the words links golf. The tight fairways are lined by high rough and even worse pot bunkers. The rough does not look as bad but I can say from own experience that hitting more than a wedge out of it is not "smart play" and can cause big trouble. The bunkers are in my opinion the most difficult part of this golf course and need to be avoided at all cost because once in there ,there is not much to do other than taking your lob wedge and hoping to get the ball out. Sometimes you even have to hit out backwards. With the strong wind that started in the later part of the day it became increasingly difficult to keep the ball on the fairway. Unfortunately, we cannot say that we did a very good job in avoiding the bunkers, which could be seen in our scores. Only Danie managed to avoid them and shot an impressive 72.

But we are keeping our heads up and are hoping for a better day tomorrow and maybe one or two of us can sneak into the cut. The weather forecast for tomorrow is not very promising (and not promising in Scottish standards equals a nightmare in the US and I am not kidding ) which might open the opportunity for us to climb up the leader board. Now we are closing the day with a visit to the nearby Circus, which should be a lot of fun!!! Check back everyone tomorrow to hear the latest news from Morgan !