The dates of the events I am playing in are the 25th – 27th July, and 30th July – 2nd Aug.
Results can be found on their website: The Gateway Tour
In the centre of their home page, look at the current tournament for the Desert Summer Series and click on the leaderboard link.
Desert Series Tournament #7
Scores: 69 – 67 – 77 (-3) 33rd
Prize money: US$1178
Hey, it’s nice to finally be in the money!
Desert Series Tournament #8
Scores: 75 – 74 (+5) MC
Today I made my way across the dry landscape from Los Angeles to Phoenix for the second leg of my American trip. Phoenix is home to a part of the Gateway Tour. It is probably America’s second strongest pay-for-play tour outside the NGA Hooters Tour.
At this time of the year the Gateway Tour hold a series of events to form what’s called the Desert Summer Series. I will be playing event 7 and maybe 8. The buy in for each event is $1200 and $1600 respectively. Such is pay-for-play.
Due to the dry desert heat, the courses in Phoenix are quite similar to what can be found back in Queensland.
The Lake Hills Jeju Open has had a date change. The event, which was just announced last week, is now to be held Aug 30 – Sep 2. This is great as it tightens up the Korean Tour schedule, meaning I can spend another week in the US doing something usefull…. as long as I can change my flight again 😀 So woopee!
The Korean Tour has changed it’s schedule again. On a good note, one of the cancelled events has been replaced with the LakeHills Jeju Open starting Aug 23, with a prize purse of US$300,000. This will cut two weeks off my US trip. My priority lies in playing in Korea to develop my game.
I just played in the CrossCreek Open on the Golden State Pro Tour to gain some experience in the US. The tournament was played over three rounds with a two round cut. Unfortunately I missed the cut shooting 78-71 (+7).
The tour is based soley in California. It is a pay-for-play tour, with a buy in of US$1000 per event. At the moment they get around 70 players per event, well short of their desired 140 to create large enough purses to make it a profitable tour to play on. Mainly Californian professionals compete on the tour to keep their competitive juices flowing between other opportunities during the year.
A couple of days ago I arrived in Los Angeles to spend a few weeks in the US to play some pay-for-play events and attend some Nationwide Tour pre-qualifiers.
75 today, +4. As a result I will miss the cut by a couple.
I hit the ball well this week but my putting was terrible. That’s the simple difference.
73 today, +2.
Get a load of this. This course is the definition of narrow fairways (please excuse the high res pictures. I will try to compress later):
I kid you not, every hole is similar to this. Why you design fairways like this is beyond me. It is some of the worst course design I have ever seen. Defeats the purpose of positional play. Explain to me how the driving area for the driver is narrower than the landing area for wedge approach shots…..
But no complaints from me. Looks like everyone will be playing from the rough this week 🙂 There are birdies to be had here. Maybe not on the 484m par 4 5th, which forces me not to hit driver as shown below, but they are there:
The dreaded split fairway also appears a few times at Apple City:
The greens have a nice surface, medium softness with simple contouring. The rough is a thinner wispier leaf so some spin can be applied to the ball. It is unfortunate the fairways are this narrow because this is the first course we have played that has mown fairways. They are beautiful.
Because of the fairway designs this course is a bombers course. Overall this is a course that I like very much from the point of view of how it suits my game.
The Korean Tour bandwagon arrived in Yantai, China, late yesterday after a short 1 hour flight from Incheon Airport, Seoul. A 1 hour bus ride and everyone was at their respective motels.
The Yantai area we are in is not the nicest. Third world if you will, nowhere near a major city. Not the sort of streets you want to go for a walk down either.
The hotel smells and every shop nearby is Chinese. So it’s the motel and golf club.
Why are we in China for a Korean Tour event?
…. here’s the catch that ties everything together. Apple City is a brand new course that is owned by Koreans. The golf complex is being setup for golfing getaways for Korean. Cheap land, cheap labor and only a one hour flight from Incheon Airport in Seoul.
