Oh my greatness!!! What an exciting Sunday afternoon it was for me on the bag in Singapore, my first play-off! It's quite a thing, especially when 5 players were involved. It really was quite a surprise, a very pleasant one..., to find ourselves in contention as when we were walking up the 18th fairway I was seriously just hoping we would be able to hang in for a top 5 finish as I'd noticed a few holes back that the leader board was getting quite jammed and a couple of the guys had aleready finished on good scores. So I knew we had to finish strong. Well things changed somewhat on the leaderboard between the 16th and 18th. When we stepped on to the 18th green we were tie for the lead at -9!!!! I wasn't sure if Tjaart had seen the board or not so I opted to keep it to myself and just encourage him the same way I had on the other 17 holes.....'stick to the routine'... Tjaart had landed the ball on the green after a good 2nd shot with the 3 wood, the hole was playing long, Tjaart had a decent length putt for birdie. But it wasn't to be, and we walked off the green with a par after a good 2nd putt.
It was quite a long 10/15 minute wait for the final group to finish, and I found myself curiously listening for any loud cheers which would indicate a birdie from one of the players in the last group. But all I heard were "ooooohs and aaaaaahs" then I knew...... it was play-off time.
All the guys made par on the first play-off hole and then it was back to the tee. Luckily we were transported back to the tee by golf carts as by this stage I was wondering if the "boss" would be paying me extra for each extra hole I would be walking ;-)
Tjaart's tee shot 2nd time round wasn't exactly his best of the day and he went left into the thicker grass. It was a tough 2nd shot with his 3 iron which saw him go left again and into the super-thick stuff. It was tough to get out of it and he landed the ball in the green side bunker. Even though he knew by that stage he was out of it he still hit a great bunker shot for a tap-in bogey. Two of the other players (da Silva & van der Valk) also dropped out which left 2 players at it.
Of course a win would have been the ultimate result and it was awesome to be so close. It was pretty special for me being on the bag and sharing the experience with Tjaart.
Seeing how well my pro played I SO know he's close to the W. He needs, and wants some fine tuning from his coach which he'll be getting in the next couple of weeks.
After the excitement we still managed to catch the last 20 minutes of the Springboks playing in their RWC game against Wales.
It was a long day out and we were both exhausted, we managed to finish up packing and found ourselves setting the alarm for 3am!! That should actually not be allowed! We had a 6am flight to Hong Kong, perhaps not the greatest idea, it was quite funny to see how quiet people are at the airport at the ridiculous time of 4.15am.
We managed to get in a couple of hours sleep on the flight, thank goodness. From Hong Kong we caught the ferry to Macau, quite an experience. This is another first time visit for us both so we hope to get some sight seeing in on Wednesday as tomorrow is practice round day. Apparently it's quite a tough walk this week so I'll check it out tomorrow - if it is, at least I won't feel guilty if I miss a gym session or two.
Chat soon, Vicki
