The League to Dubai Finals, part 1.

I left at Lunchtime on Wednesday, stopped over at Manchester Airport and then spent all day Thursday from 0545 to 2300 in either a queue or on a seat in a plane. It was a pretty good trip and I managed to watch a couple of good movies on the Etihad plane. The Y-bar at the Rotana hotel on Yas Island where we are staying got a pretty good workout by the majority of us on Thursday night and last drinks was called at 0200 so an incredibly deep 5.5 hour sleep had me wondering what the annoying noise eminating from my phone was at 0800.

Friday was a great day. I was so excited about getting out and seeing the Yas links golf course that I took these two pictures from my window

After a fantastic breakfast we were given a briefing and welcome by the League to Dubai team, given our tee times for our first two games (Arabian Ranches on Sunday and Yas Links on Monday) and also given a couple of shirts with compliments of Sub 70 clothing.

After the chat I went for a walk to Yas Links golf club with a few of the guys. We were like a bunch of excited schoolkids finishing school for the summer holidays as we walked the service path along the course to the clubhouse.

We got to the clubhouse at Yas Links and found out that we could use the practice facilities before our par3 challenge so the plan was to get back early in the afternoon for a session of blowing the cobwebs from the swings. First things first though and it was lunch and a dip in the pool.

Lunch was incredible! the food was gorgeous and the variety was huge. I was absolutely stuffed afterwards.

The afternoon practice session was definitely worthwhile as it took be two big buckets to figure out what I was doing wrong and the greens are very different in their behaviour to any I have putted and chipped on before. Now it was time for the floodlit par3 challenge!

I had a great time, although I still couldn't hit the ball well. The format was best three stableford scores (no handicap) from 4 players in each team (except ours which was a team of 3). Our team managed to not win and we were a massive 15 points back from the winners who shot 68 points! Nice shootin' Tex! One of my team members (Chris) did manage to win a sleeve of balls for being the nearest to the pin on the ninth hole after knocking his shot to within 18 inches of the flag!

It was a top way to start our golf and gave us all more of an opportunity to get to know each other.

Part 2 sees 12 of us heading to Saadiyat golf club in Abu Dhabi. It looks amazing and I can't wait to play it!