As players we eagerly look forward to playing on home soil in front of our families and friends. It provides us with an advantage of knowing the course layout better and helps us to strategise our game plan. On the flip side it also brings in higher self-expectations of winning the tournament.

    During this off season, I had toiled hard to be in the winning circle in the fifth edition of Jeev Milkha Singh Invitational . Everything was going well as planned and as a build up to this event.

But what do you do when you find that the course conditions have changed/ deteriorated after coming back to Chandigarh after playing five weeks of competitive golf outstation. In my case I found that the greens were bumpy and slow. This impacted the quality and consistency of my putting stroke . Wet and heavy fairways end up putting  good ball strikers who play with muscle back (MBs or blades) set of irons at a huge disadvantage. The MBs have a smaller sweet spot, are less forgiving and impact the accuracy cum carry distance of each club. These two factors combined denuded the home course advantage.

Notwithstanding the above, I did put in my best to offset the disadvantage of course conditions and unprecedented spells of rain. Playing this  week has helped me to understand better my strengths, the varying course conditions and equipment capabilities cum constraints. As part of my growing, I take up these as positive take aways. These will help me to improve my skill set  and come back stronger in the next edition of Jeev Milkha Singh Invitational