Tarleton Ladies Pro Am

On Wednesday 24th I saw a post on social media by one of my friends saying that a female pro was needed for a ladies pro am the following week... I confirmed I was available and I was contacted by Tarleton later in the day to confirm that they would be very happy to have me.
Flights confirmed from Leeds Bradford 7.15am on Saturday morning so i had 2 days to get ready!

The warm weather was welcomed when i landed in Faro airport and met a group of ladies also playing in the pro am to be transferred across to the Precise Resort, El Rompido.

My team, a group of ladies who have been friends for years were there to welcome me when i got off the coach.

The format of the week was 6 lady amateurs with 1 lady professional per team, 21 teams were there from across Europe.
El Rompido has a North and a South Course and i would be playing 9 holes with both of my groups of 3 each day. For the main competition we all counted as a team and 4 stableford scores were to count per hole out of the 7. A different but interesting concept and great fun.

Sunday
Our practice round on the North course, we started on the 10th hole, and to keep it fun Tarleton arranged that we play it as a Waltz format, 1, 2, 3 to score over the first 3 holes and so on. My team was split into 2 teams of 3 and both teams played steady, it was good for me to see the course and the ladies playing for the first time.
Welcome drinks and players meeting this evening, and dinner with my team to get to know them a little more.

Monday
We had a practice round on the South Course today but we were all mixed up playing a Texas scramble with ladies from other teams, I had 2 groups of lovely ladies from all over the U.K. and 1 from Norway and again played 9 holes with each.
It was a drop out Texas scramble format so if we chose my drive i couldn't then play the next shot, which i think was a great idea to involve the whole team.

Tuesday
Day 1 of the main competition and we were playing on the North course again, after a good warm up, we didn’t play the first hole to the best of our abilities but everyone’s games improved as the round went on.
A respectable 147 points put us in 8th place after the first round on what i was told to be the harder scoring course.

Tuesday night is traditionally party night with karaoke on the Tarleton Tour. So plenty of drinks and laughs were had and we all had a great evening!

Wednesday “Day off"
Despite a few sore heads most of my team wanted to get some practice in before we went to the local town and beach for some lunch and a chilled afternoon.

A mixture of some range time and then around the greens, bunkers, chipping and putting. It was great to have my team be so keen to get out and do some practice at the great facilities at El Rompido and to see their skills improving with my help was also rewarding for me.

Thursday
Playing on the South Course teeing off the 10th.
The team did great and with a points score of 156 we moved up to 4th position with one round to go, 4 points behind the leaders for the final round so all to play for. Steph & Cheryl’s putting had particularly improved after our practice on Wednesday.

Friday
We started on the 1st hole of the South Course for the final round, the ladies all played great, Steph had 40 points on her own, and Chris had 36, then everyone else got their fair share of points on the card.
When we totalled up the 2 playing groups scores to find out our best 4 from 7, we had an amazing 170 points, 26 under par, including 13 points on one hole. We knew we’d done great but didn’t know if it was going to be good enough until the presentation at the gala dinner.

A chilled afternoon by the pool and lots of whispering about scores but nobody knew who had actually secured the team victory.
At around 10pm the presentation started, we had a team 2nd place in the waltz, Steph won 2 days of best individual, and Chris got round 3 2nd individual too.
Even when second place for the team event was announced we still didn’t know if our score was actually enough to secure the victory. But when we were announced as the winners it was fantastic, my team was over the moon and so was I!!

I had a lovely week at my first Tarleton pro am and we really played as a team, I was thrilled to see the improvements from the ladies I’d helped through the week too!


To see my name up on the top of the leaderboard again was lovely too. 🙂. I had a good week individually putting some new skills into practice on the course.


A week at home before my next string of events come in Switzerland, Sweden and Switzerland.