Date: March 28, 2012
Author:

National Squad Diary: Cameron Smith

By Cameron Smith From the 7th to 9th March at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club, I was fortunate enough to represent Australia in the Open Men’ssection of the Trans Tasman Cup. Other members of the team were Jake Higginbottom, Nathan Holman and Ryan McCarthy. We all flew down on Tuesday morning and ended up getting to the golf club (where we were also staying) around 5 o clock that afternoon. The first thing we did was sort out who we were staying with, I was rooming with Jake. Jake and I had an awesome time together the whole week, we first met when we were about 13 at a junior event and have been best mates ever since. After we all got our bags into the room, we all got together and had a quick putting competition, until we got called in for dinner. We had dinner at the golf club all week and the meals were outstanding. After dinner we all went straight to bed, we had to get up early the next morning for the practice round. For those of you who don t know, Peninsula has 2 golf courses. We played the north course, it was in amazing condition. It would be one of my favourite courses; it has such a good mixture of short, long, tight and wide holes. The course was so demanding from the tee and we all knew that s where the matches would be won or lost. We played the practice round in a group, trying to get as much information as we could from the golf course. Although the practice round took us just under 6 hours, it was worth it, we only got 1 practice round so we had to make the most of it. After the round, we all got together for recovery; we did some stretches and then headed to the ICE BATHS!! We had to do 2 minutes in a hot shower, then 1 minute in the ice. We had to do that three times and although it did hurt then, it was well worth it after. After dinner we played pool, it was good to chill out for a while. I think there has to be times away from golf in order to play your best, just get your mind off golf and have fun with your mates. We had another early night for an early start again. We woke in the morning for the opening foursomes matches, I played with Jake and we played reasonably well but we just lost. We left a few shots out there but they were too good. After foursomes we played our singles matches, which I fell short in, but a couple of the boys went well. After the day we only had 1.5 points to us and 4.5 points to the New Zealanders. With only one day left we had a lot of ground to make up. The next day we started with the foursomes again, same pairings, but against a different opposition. Both pairings won in the morning, so we had got it back to 3.5 to 4.5. In the afternoon I got up but we ended up losing our section 5.5 to 6.5. Luckily there were 3 other divisions (Open Women’s, Junior Boys and Junior Girls) and they all won. As a team we won and I was pleased with my personal performance. It was an awesome week and I had lots of fun with everyone. Cameron Smith is a member of the 2012 National Squad. To find out more about Cam, click here. Coming up in April April sees Cathleen travel to Carbrook Golf Club in Queensland to defend her Australian Girls&apos Amateur Championship title before representing NSW in the Australian Girls&apos Interstate Teams Matches at the same course. The next month is just as busy for Cam, who is jetting off to play for the Bonallack Trophy at the Monte Rei Golf and Country Club in Portugal. MYGolf will be keeping track of how they&aposre going and provide updates via Facebook and Twitter. Best of luck to Cathleen and Cam for the month ahead!