A full and thoroughly enjoyable five weeks after signing off for 2020…myself and the team have officially returned back to the Desert in order to begin my fifth season on the European Tour! And what a year this has the potential to be…with both the Olympics and Ryder Cup appearing on the calendar, there is truly no point in wasting any time and I am really hoping for a great start here this week in Abu Dhabi to kick things off!

Although we are still operating under the strict restrictions that the pandemic has imposed on us…the European Tour have done an incredible job to ensure that we get things started in the right way again – with the first of our four Rolex Series events this year, The Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship. The field also includes almost one third of the Top 50 players in the World this week – so it is sure to be a great watch for viewers back home too!

The regular golf fans out there will need little background information from me in advance of this weeks tournament since this will be the 16th time that the Abu Dhabi Golf Club has hosted this Championship! It is a traditionally long and flat desert track which undoubtedly favours players with length off the tee. However, there are also a number of tight fairways, bunkers in key landing areas as well as water in play on nine of the eighteen holes which means that accuracy and strong iron shots are going to be essential too! The rough is also heavy in places out there so I will for sure be looking to minimise any mistakes to avoid getting punished during the next four days!

For those interested, I will have a new driver in the bag this week – the Callaway Epic Speed! I spent the last week trialing it and am honestly really happy with the results. I have also made a few technical tweaks and reduced the loft from 9.5 down to 9.0 degrees and added a little weight to club head too since, this way, I am experiencing much better dispersion rates.

The last thing worthy of note this week in Abu Dhabi is that we are going to be dealing with some pretty intense weather conditions over the next few days! As a matter of fact, there could be a distinct AM/PM spilt in the scoring tomorrow since the course is fairly exposed and the wind is forecast is set to pick up to around 15-20mph in the afternoon as opposed to only light breezes in the morning. Friday AM is unfortunately also set to be breezy too! Conditions look like they will ease out over the weekend though so hopefully I can keep things steady until it quietens down!

Bubble life continues this week with strict rules constricting our movements to the Golf Course and Hotel only…but nonetheless, I am really looking forward to getting back into action this week! 2021…I am ready for you!