I’ve loved being out in South Africa to start the season and having learned so much, I can’t wait to tee it up in Europe, writes Rosie Belsham
At the end of last season, I took some time to sit down with my coach and look at my swing and stats. Once I took a breath, it was clear how much impact my foot injury had on my long game. Half a season of hitting drives without being able to put weight through my left foot had grooved bad habits into my swing as well as impacting my accuracy. It was clear I needed to spend the off-season making technical adjustments to get my swing back to where it was.
The Sunshine Tour in South Africa runs from mid-February to the end of March, with five events over six weeks. This proved a great opportunity to test my swing improvements against some tough fields, gain some experience as a professional golfer, and get a solid run of golf and practice in warm weather.
The first two events in Cape Town were, honestly, a real struggle. I hadn’t played much golf at all, almost exclusively hitting balls on the range. This was the first time putting my swing changes into play and it really showed. Although I was confident on the range, transferring it to the golf course is a vastly different feeling as every lie, target and shot is different. The venues were beautiful, old courses with narrow tree-lined fairways, and I struggled to keep it in play off the tee – which put a lot of pressure on the rest of my game, especially my short game, which to my excitement held up pretty well.
The third event was at Sun City, the venue for the Nedbank Golf Challenge on the DP World Tour. If you missed the fairway here, you were buried in thick rough and had to just hack it out. After two missed cuts, it was a mental battle to retain my confidence and remind myself of my objectives for the trip. It took going back to my trusted tee it low and let it cut tee shot to find some consistency. I ultimately missed the cut by one, but I found so much confidence and finally shook off the rust.
With 10 days of practice before my next event, I sent some videos to my coach and hit thousands of shots with driver before finally finding some consistency. That was enough to plan how to play each hole at Blair Atholl in Johannesburg. The most important thing I learned from this challenge was never losing the belief that I could do it – I just had to battle it out and enjoy the good stuff. Golf can be a cruel sport and if your confidence is low, one bad shot at the wrong time can ruin your flow. However, that’s what I love about golf – the challenge of figuring out a problem. After three under-par rounds and a T17 finish, I was convinced I was making great progress.
As I write, I have one more week in Johannesburg, where I’m hoping for some more solid golf and improving the feelings I have on the golf course. I am happy that I am building momentum, my scores are improving each week and the errors are reducing. I am confident I will be ready to hit the ground running when the European season starts in April.
This trip has been my first real taste of life as a professional golfer and I’ve loved it. I have learnt so much that will help me going forward. There are several girls out here who I have played college golf with and they’re also starting out on their pro journey. It’s been good to catch up and travel together to events, and the support network will be so important during the season.
I had one eventful transfer through the middle of the African bush in a small minibus with some of the British girls – during which our driver couldn’t stay awake so we had to talk, shout and sing at him – I think we will laugh about that all year.
It has been tough to work out how to manage my routine while on the road. Keeping up gym work while playing so much golf has been exhausting, and mentally draining, but I’ve learned so much about what works for me. After last year’s injury, I’m trying hard to listen to my body and adapt.
In my last column, I wrote about the importance of putting and the event at Blair Atholl highlighted that again. In my final round, I played with a girl who shot 60 (-11) to win the tournament by one shot. It was probably one of the most boring rounds of golf I’ve watched, but it was a pleasure to witness. She didn’t hit it closer than me or further than me, but she holed so many putts – needing just 24 for 18 holes. Our other playing partner took 28 putts and finished fourth. It could be easy to be demoralised by the gap between where I am right now and that performance, but it has motivated me even more. I haven’t had my A game so far and I’ve kept up.
I know where I can get better and challenge myself, and I can see a route to shooting a boring 60 to win.
