2023 Challenge Tour DAVID BOOTE’S

Firstly I hope everyone is having a great golfing start to 2023.

For me The Challenge Tour season started again in one of my favourite countries to visit, South Africa. It truly is a very special place with massive variations in scenery, weather and courses. The partnership between the Challenge Tour and the Sunshine Tour continues to thrive year on year and has been helpful in enabling European players to play in high quality events early in the year when the weather back at home is so cold and unpredictable. It also gives South African players a slight early season home advantage which evens out through the year.

This February we had four events starting at Royal Cape Golf Club, Cape Town. This is one of my best loved courses and quite similar to those in Europe with strong winds coming into play. I felt prepared and ready to go after all the work I’d put in this winter and managed a solid tournament, finishing tied 28th on 7 under par. The highlight of the week was a chip in on the 72nd hole in front of a loud, large and well hydrated crowd!

The second week was at Fancourt Golf Club George, about a four hour drive east of Cape Town. The Dimension Data Pro am is a slightly different format to normal in which we get paired up with amateur partners, typically who are sponsors of the event or invited guests. It creates some distraction but being at Fancourt and getting to play on the Links Course is truly one of the best experiences of South Africa. Unfortunately, I missed the cut by one this week, but it was some consolation that in missing the cut by a single shot after 3 rounds you know that your game is very close to being competitive.

For the third week we headed up to the SDC Open in Limpopo which is around two hours north of Johannesburg up in the ‘bush’ or ‘high veld’ region. This year we played at Zebula Golf Club which was a very good layout, accompanied with lots of wildlife around the course. Perhaps the wildlife was too much of a distraction this week as I unfortunately missed the cut. However, it was still an enjoyable week, especially staying in a house on site with a few of my friends who are fellow players on the tour.

Finally for the last week we travelled down to Port Elizabeth for the Nelson Mandela Bay Championship. This was a new city and golf course for these co-sanctioned events and so into the unknown for the European players. HumeWood Golf Club was very linksy in set up and reminded me a lot of home, with the 20/30mph winds all week. I enjoy playing in the wind and I guess not surprisingly I had my best finish out there finishing T16th on 11 under par. The city was excellent with great beaches, restaurants and The Addo Elephant National Park – the third largest national park in South Africa just a 45 minute drive away.

I finished this early tour segment a total of 20 strokes under par for the 13 rounds played, with a stroke average of 70.54. It has placed me 46th on the order of merit (The race to Majorca) which is an improvement on this time last year. I will need to reduce my stroke average too much closer to 70 (or below) this year to achieve the main objective of a top 20 position. It’s a good start though.

I now have two weeks at home preparing for two upcoming events in Bangalore, India. The weather hasn’t been helping so far but hopefully it improves before I fly out East again.

I hope everyone has had a decent winter’s golfing, whether indoors or outdoors, and you are now working on your swings ready for a big summer of golf!

We welcome groups from 12 to 100+ players. Waterlooville Golf Club is one of Hampshire’s friendliest clubs and you are sure to have a great experience, from the warm welcome, to the fantastic championship course right through to the great food after your game.

If you haven’t played it, put it on your bucket list! The friendliness of the welcome, the presentation of the course and the quality of the greens were all outstanding.

Andra, Gloucestershire Team Captain

If you were to get an audio play-back of all your self talk during a round you would probably be shocked at how negative it is. Negative self talk will never help us. In fact, it lowers confidence and puts a negative experience to memory.

So how do we change self talk to build confidence and guide us towards the thinking, feelings and behaviors that are performance enhancing?

First, we have to agree with the following assumptions: c We will always hit some bad shots in any round of golf c How those shots make us feel is out of our control c We have time between how something makes us feel and how we respond to it

There are 3 types of self talk:

1. negative self talk

2. neutral self talk and

3. positive self talk.

We already discussed there being no benefit at all from negative self talk. Neutral self talk is simple instructions you can give yourself such as ‘pick