Life in a tournament week of John Catlin
Hello again Sligo followers. I am excited to come to you with this blog and to tell you a little bit more about myself. This time I will be writing to you about what a typical tournament week for me looks like. I hope you enjoy the behind the scenes look at what I face on a typical tournament week.
I am a professional golfer who plays in many different countries all over the Asian continent. However my pre, during and post tournament routines are very similar from one week to the next. For this blog I will assume that my example tournament starts on a Thursday and goes till a Sunday as this is the most common format in tournament professional golf. On Monday, I will be leaving my place in Hua Hin Thailand in the morning to get on the bus from downtown Hua Hin to Bangkok airport to catch my flight to the event. Most of my tournaments that I play in I have a direct flight to my destination but sometimes I have one layover if the destination is very remote and hard to get to such as places like Sabah and Kuching Malaysia or Queenstown New Zealand. I will usually arrive monday night to my hotel and look for a shower, good stretch/foam roller session and a good night’s rest. Tuesday morning I will hit the gym and get some breakfast. From there I will head to the golf course for some practice. Now if I am not in the Pro am, which is typically on a Wednesday I will have to play my practice round on a Tuesday because I really feel that I need to see a golf course at least once before tournament competition in order to be prepared to compete at my best. Whether that practice round is on Tuesday or Wednesday is completely dependent on my involvement in the Pro am. Now it’s time for the tournament to start and when it does there will always be two waives of tee times each day with the waives flip flopping on the following day. For example, if I tee off in the morning on a Thursday I will be teeing off in the afternoon on a Friday or vice versa. After two rounds there is a cut to the top 60 players and ties at most events with some smaller events being cut to top 50 players and ties after two rounds. This is cut down from a total of 100-140 players each tournament that I play in. When I survive this cut I am guaranteed a paycheck and two tee times over the weekend one on Saturday and one on Sunday with the pairings being dependent on what score the player shoots. The better position the player is in the later his tee time will be with the leaders in the final group both days. After the tournament is finished I am usually trying to fly out early the next morning so as to allow for a good night sleep on Sunday night. Sometimes I go from one event to another so this process will begin all over again if this is the case. In 2017, I had my longest streak of consecutive tournaments in my career at 8 straight tournaments culminating in my second win of the season at the PGM EurAsia Perak Championship.
I hope you enjoyed this brief behind the scenes look at what a tournament week looks like for me on the road and I look forward to seeing you back next time on my Sligo Blog.
John Catlin
