1st Royal Benzinger

What the heck is a Benzinger? I had to ask my flightpartners yesterday in the 1st Royal Benzinger tournament to find out that it is the worst possible divot: the ball still is in its original position, but the grass divot has wrapped itself around it. My kind of tournament, I thought, fun people wanting to have a good time on the course.

Ralf, Henning and I took on the challenge of the GC Stolper Heide west course. During the next six hours (took a little long) we all would go through every emotion this sport has to offer. Anger, frustration, challenge and joy. Ralf’s day was made by his first par on the par4 17th, leaving the birdie putt just a little short of the cup. Henning went through his first tournament of the year after a longer pause and played a solid game. Both of the guys played really nice wood shots off the tee and made me miss my woods a little bit. My irons give me good lenghts off the tee, but there is no margin for error with a four iron, the woods were a little more forgiving. Maybe this is the practice plan for the winter, to get them working again.

It was my first tourney with my new handicap and suddenly, you have to play bogey and the occasional double-bogey to play your score. I will have to get used to that and not starting to worry too much about the score and just play my play. Yesterday it was hard work, and a couple of triple bogeys almost ruined my score. Also, I wasn’t able to nail down some good scores on the par 3′s as I missed all greens. My only friends were the par 5′s, but that wasn’t enough. I came home with 32 stableford points, just enough to stay inside the handicap buffer. Which was ok, taking into account the good time we had on the course.

From the course, we drove directly to the venue of the evening event, an eight course meal accompanied by eight different wines at the restaurant St. Moritz. What a stylish way to end the day – stimulated conversations with fun and interesting people until 2:30 in the morning. Not to forget the award ceremony. You could call our flight the winning flight, as Ralf and I won both handicap classes. Well, the organisers of the event Martin and Matthias played better than me but excluded themselves from the scoring, what left me in the top spot. And look what the prize was:

Cool, huh? Just in time – as my old Adidas golf shoes start to fall apart!