Welcome to my monthly newsletter for February. I’d like to begin this month’s newsletter with a bit of good news – the Pro-Am tournament I played on the Algarve in Portugal was a great success with my team from Carus Green winning the week pretty convincingly….. successfully defending our title which we won two years ago in the same event which is very pleasing after not playing any competitive golf for the last couple of months. I also finished 3rd individually, and although I didn’t play quite as well as I would have liked personally it’s a positive result nevertheless as the two players ahead of me had played the previous week as well in another Pro/Am mainly on the same courses.

It was certainly nice to be away from home and getting some competitive golf under my belt in reasonable weather when the weather was so poor at home up in Kendal! We played some excellent courses during the eight rounds in eight days we were there… Quinta North & South as well as Laranjal were exceptional with the greens on Quinta South running at 12 on the stimpmetre which was a bit quicker than everyone was used to.

Next up for me is preparing for the EuroPro Tour School at the beginning of April at Frilford Heath which will be a good test of where I’m at as far as my game is concerned. Then I will be heading off to the US to do some practise around Pinehurst again for ten days as I did last year, and begin my final preparations for the start of the new European Senior Tour season which starts at the end of May at the Celtic Manor Resort, Wales on the Roman Road course. Prior to that I’m hoping to play some EuroPro events for some good competitive golf to help hone my game! At the moment, I’m still in the process of sorting out my new equipment and I’ll need plenty of time to prepare and ensure I’m in the strongest possible position to get the new season off to a good start. Some of my new clothing and equipment from Galvin Green, Titleist and Miura has begun to arrive which is exciting, and I look forward to trying everything out over the next few weeks. I have a trip up to the North Berwick area for six days of golf next week which I’m hugely looking forward to as I think the golf up there is really excellent, and I hope it will help to forge some positive vibes for the coming campaign!

I had originally planned to go across to Bermuda to play in a couple of tournaments the Bermuda Open, and World Par 3… but have decided against it due to it not really providing the golf I need at a critical time in my preparations for April through to June and onwards. At the moment it feels like I have to scrabble around to get any kind of competitive golf though which is frustrating, and is not helped by the uncertainty of the current Senior Tour schedule with almost six months without any events which is a very tough situation to be in. Unfortunately, I find myself worrying about the future of the European Senior Tour – we have gone down from 25 tournaments 15 or 16 years ago to just 13 events last year, and with only nine currently confirmed for this coming year it’s not ideal! In between times, I’d love to be doing more work with the media and Sky in particular, as I love watching and discussing golf. I’m currently looking at the EuroPro Tour competing with the youngsters as well as any Pro/Ams or tournaments I can find…. so if you hear of anything that I can play then please get in touch anytime.

On a much more positive note, negotiations with Carus Green Golf Club in Kendal are progressing well and it would be a real honour to develop a close association with the club and their coaching staff, developing in particular the “Short Game Academy” there with the truly excellent facilities they have built recently at Carus which is situated on the North side of Kendal. As I’ve said before, the whole development there is probably one of the best in the UK incorporating every aspect a player needs to become a better player, and it has the added bonus of being local to me of course as well as bordering the Lake District National Park with Windermere only 15 minutes away. Obviously my professional golfing career can only go on for so long, so it will be nice to get a coaching career up and running and continue my involvement with golf long into the future. I would like to personally thank Graham Curtin in particular for his input with this whole project as well as Maurice Cotter his business partner at the club.

As usual, I’d like to thank all my sponsors for their continued and generous support. I’d also like to mention how pleased I am to see that PAR Skincare are sponsoring the Senior Tour this season. As I know from personal experience, proper skin care is crucially important and PAR has been specifically formulated for people who work outdoors a lot of the time. Just this week I had my six monthly skin check in Market Harborough to deal with any early signs of skin damage. I needed three areas dry icing to deal with new issues from last year as well as having to arrange another op on a new melanoma behind my ear which will need cutting out unfortunately. Hence I would continue to warn everyone reading this that you need to be very careful with the sun when you’re outside… plenty of lotion and/or a hat are very important particularly if you’re visiting hot climates abroad!

Well that’s about it from me this month my friends – I hope you have the chance to make the most of the longer days as we approach Easter and the Spring!

With very best wishes,

Gary