Date: October 09, 2012
Author: Whitney Hillier / Golf Australia

Whitney Hillier blog: Memories of Turkey

Wow, what a trip! The biggest men and women’s amateur event of the year has finished already. WATC was on my goals list for many years and it was amazing to achieve it and play the best I could. We had a great team this year. We had a lot of fun, trained hard and got some low scores on the board. Antalya is definitely a beautiful part of the world. It&aposs very eye opening too and seeing a culture I had never experienced before was quite amazing. The Turkish people are very welcoming, humble and supportive to every country and players there. The weather was also perfect for us that week which was very lucky! Gloria was a really nice host club. The two courses were very narrow and challenging. The Bermuda grass brought out the best in the strong players. I personally didn t play as consistently as I wanted but I bounced back well after two disappointing rounds. It just shows anything can happen in golf and it s the way you come back from it is how you learn from the mistakes. When I played well, it counted in the team score so I was happy. Bre played very solidly all week and she lead the team by putting a counting score on the board every day and finishing in the top 10 individually. Minjee also put two fantastic scores up to put us right up the leader board! Australia came tied 3rd overall out of 53 teams. I m very proud of our achievements and the amount of hard work and effort we put into this event. On behalf of the team I want to thank Shani Waugh our coach for always inspiring us every day and giving us plenty of great vibes every day. To Shani s daughter Alex for being our cute mascot and number 1 supporter for the week! Matt Cutler, our manager, for working so hard organising the whole trip, giving us a lot of support and great memories. To Titleist for their sponsorship, its always great to use their gear! To Golf Australia for sending us to Turkey and continually supporting each of us throughout our careers. We appreciate everything they do for everyone in the squads and we love representing our country. Now, onto the next event ! Work hard, train smart!