The European Tour heads for its 2006 season finale with this week’s Volvo Masters at the Club de Golf Valderrama in Spain. Funny enough, Valderrama is again the stage for the hunt for the Order of Merit.

Last season we saw Colin Montgomerie and Michael Campbell battleing it out, this season there are four main contenders for the title – leader Paul Casey, Padraig Harrington, David Howell and Robert Karlsson. Casey’s has a $352,691 lead over Harrington. The purse for the event is $4,909,984 with $835,967 going to the winner. To see who else is playing (because Els isn’t) check the 2006 players list.

To follow the tourney, check the following sources:
- the Valderrama website,
- the official tournament website (with live scoring),
- the European Tour website (with live scoring).

Set your mood for this event by pimping your desktop with the Valderrama screensaver or wallpaper. Enjoy!

Moorfleet is situated southeast of Hamburg, adjacent to the Autobahn A1 you’ll find Red Golf Moorfleet, a public ‘pay and play’ course. It offers a 9-hole course, driving range with 60 bays (20 of them covered) and practice areas for chipping and putting.

The course is rather short, from yellow it only measures 2.550 meters (see individual hole lenghts here), but I didn’t think it was that narrow like I heard beforehand. The 9 hole course of GC Kallin is harder in that aspect. Scenically it is quite pleasant with big trees and reed lining the fairways, but it surely isn’t a challenge to the proficient golfer. Only on hole six did I have to think about ball placement, on all other holes (except the 79m par 3 third) I’d just let it rip. The par 4 eigth is probably the most boring, 316 meters straight ahead with a fairway flat as a snooker table.

Read the rest of this entry »