Saturday 15th July was upon us and this could mean only one this ‘The President’s Classic’ had arrived! The President had sold it as “arguably the best day of the tour”,” easily the best value” and this was the tenth President’s.
The venue was once again the golfing complex The Warwickshire. The longest day of golf started early with a 7.40 am meet up for bacon rolls and coffee. Traditionally the morning kicks off with the Ryder Cup matchplay event, but not this year, we started with 18 holes of Stapleforth. Fresh from the win of the PR Skins ringing in my ears, I felt confident another win could be on the cards. The four-ball consisted of me, Donk, Peds and Bruce. The first tee shot didn’t go well for me, a straight hook to the left, lucky for me it didn’t go out of bounds. I thought the situation on the first had been rescued with a nice recovery to only hit my third ball out of bounds!! Needless to say I scored zero points on the first. Lucky for me, that turned out to be the last time I didn’t score.
As a group we played some nice golf on the front 9 which was really the back 9 as we started on the 10th. The strangest thing happened on 14th tee, Donk, Peds and Bruce all lost their first ball off the tee, something I’ve never seen before. As we finished the 14th, we could hear swearing coming from the 15th tee. We arrived to see Greg’s finishing in the bushes about 10 yards from the tee box for what he said was his third tee shot. I managed to finish the front/back 9 with 20 points. This was largely down to my 3 wood going straight and with a lot of distance. Needless to say Bruce was still smashing his driver 30 yards past.
The back 9 started with more solid play from all members of the group, Bruce started to find his form with some great shots. My 3 wood continued to play well off the tee with sounds of ‘Bandit’ coming from Peds. I didn’t let this distract me from what was fast becoming my best round of the year. Donk won the Shark on the par 3 over the water. The round finished with me scoring a total of 39 points and second place overall scoring 33 points.
After an epic morning of golf we had the chef’s special lunch waiting for us. Discussion soon turned from my second win in three events, to the Ryder Cup matchplay coming in the afternoon.
