Diary From The Challenge Tour: Chris Hanson

Away from the glamour of the European Tour there are thousands of golfers trying to make enough money to support their dreams and their families. In this TG online feature we follow the highs and lows of 2011 EuroPro Tour Order of Merit winner Chris Hanson, as he tries to adjust to life on the Challenge Tour. This week he was in France…

Hi everyone

Back to a normal written blog for a few weeks now, as really not sure where and when I will be playing over the next month.

I really enjoyed last week in Kazakhstan, as I was lucky enough to be staying with a family out there who treated me like part of their own family! They were great! They made the week a lot easier and I’m pretty sure it helped me play well for the first few rounds! Thanks again, guys!!

I left them on Monday morning for a 1pm flight from Almaty, and this is how the next 24 hours went… Almaty to Astana (fly at 1pm), Astana to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Heathrow and then a four hour drive home arriving around midnight. After a few hours sleep, myself, Laura and Jess left for Manchester around 5.30am, ready for the next flight to Toulouse at 9.00am with the plan to be on the course for a practice round somewhere around 3.00pm!

A pretty quick turn around but I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to play again this week, as my category did not get me into the event as field sizes are now limited due to daylight. But luckily for me my management company (ISM) managed to get me an invite into the event, which is great!

To have the family with me for the week too is a dream come true, the last two weeks away have been tough and I would really have struggled to not see Laura and watch Jess grow up for another week. After arriving in France we checked into our hotel for the first two nights, as the official on site hotel was ‘apparently’ full….

After getting to the course we found it was not full so we were lucky to check in there from Thursday morning before I teed off. That made it a lot easier for Laura and Jess being on site, and was nice to be welcomed by them when leaving the course.

First round I played lovely and created loads of chances, I converted five of them and had no bogeys, so to shoot 66 (-5) was great. It felt nice to be rewarded for all the practice I’ve done over the last few weeks! 

I played pretty similar throughout the whole week and followed that 66 up with rounds of 71, 70 & 72 to finish the tournament in T17th place on -5. I needed a finish like that to get some more money on the board, for people who don’t know how the Challenge Tour works it’s pretty important to get inside that top 80 on the OOM come the end of the year.#

Now my fingers are tightly crossed that I may manage to receive another invite to play next week in Spain. If I do we are going for a family road trip five hours South of Toulouse into Spain near Barcelona.

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With a flight booked home Tuesday, we were all set to leave Monday afternoon when I received a call to say I had been given an invite from the Challenge Tour to play the following week! Awesome! So the road trip South began!

It was a good trip down leaving at 5.30am and we got settled in the official hotel near the beach front by lunch. Matt Ford and his family had made the journey too, so that was great for Laura to have some company when I was playing and practising. 

Unfortunately I did not pack the same golf swing I had with me in France and too many poor shots led to a score of 74 & 72 to finish +2 and miss the cut. I’ve really learnt that playing The Challenge Tour you don’t get away with making bogeys at all, the depth in standard is so much deeper than the Europro Tour and at present my bad golf is just not good enough!!

So after France it got me up to 80th in the OOM but I’m sure when the event this week in Spain finishes I will fall outside the magic mark. So fingers crossed I may get into ones more event and be able to keep the dream alive… 

But whatever happens it’s been a fantastic year and a great experience and who knows…. I’ve still got the European Tour School in November where dreams are made for the lucky 30 who win a Tour card! 

Thanks once again to everyone who has supported me this year, I hope you’ve enjoyed following my progress and hopefully there any many more exciting and slightly more positive blogs than this one to come!!