Gulf News exclusively caught up with Challenge Tour golfer and Dubai resident Joshua Grenville-Wood in his week off from tournament golf while he was back training at the Claude Harmon Academy at The Els Club, Dubai.
Josh, is it good to be back in Dubai and how have the last couple of months been?
It's great to be back. You know, it's sort of this little home feeling. Have my own space and been able to come down to the CH3 Academy and work on my game again it’s been great.
It's something I've missed definitely over the last few months and something I need to make sure I fit in a bit more often.
12 weeks on the road
But you know, it's been a long almost three and a half months now. I've done, I think, 12 weeks on the road. So it's been quite long, tough, lots of challenges and hurdles to overcome but at the end of the day I've enjoyed every minute of, it’s been good fun.
You definitely didn't plan for this busy of a summer which I guess started with the events in Abu Dhabi.
Yeah definitely. Me and Joe (Joe Marshall, Senior Instructor at CH3) had a good sit down yesterday when we sort of debriefed on everything and one of the main points is that neither of us expected to play this much golf, especially over the summer, and especially in Europe.
So it's been a bit of a scramble and, let's say, challenge to get used to it and to figure out how to deal with it. But, you know, it's been good.
Take us back to those two weeks in Abu Dhabi on the Challenge Tour. How special were they?
Very. They kick started my season, giving me the opportunity to play the golf that I have and in the places that I have, it's been fantastic.
I would like to be able to play that good again at some point again this season! But it was amazing to be able to do it when I needed to.
I guess the relationship the Emirates Golf Federation has with the Challenge Tour has helped you out as well.
Definitely. It's been fantastic that they've been able to strike a partnership together and be able to get the opportunity to get a few spots in some events because of the EGF is fantastic.
I can't thank them and the Challenge Tour enough for it.
Talk us through the last two months of your golf on the Challenge Tour.
It's been tough. Had a little bit of a slump with my game, started struggling a little bit.
I missed two cuts in a row, which hurt a little bit because I knew I wasn't playing bad enough to miss cuts. But, you know, it happens.
But other than that, we've done some great work over the last month now with Joe and my other coaches and my team. Things are definitely looking a lot better and games getting a lot better as well. Back to where it should be.
And what's the travel aspect been like?
Tough haha! Very tough. In my first month, everything was pretty last minute. I wasn't getting into the events till the Friday before the event.
Booking everything last minute, not knowing where I was going to be, not knowing what I was doing. So it's been very tough.
Been a challenge on the body
Playing every single week and almost every single day has been quite a challenge, especially on the body it's not used to it. So it's tough, but good at the same time.
How do you attack the rest of the Challenge Tour season?
Just need to keep taking it one event at a time. I need to just keep putting some points on the board and keep trying to stay as high as I can in the order of merit (Road to Mallorca Rankings) and we'll go from there.
The plan hopefully is to play every event, well most events till they finish for the year and make it to Mallorca somehow!
So that's the plan and we'll see if we can stick to it and get through it.
What's next event wise?
Hopeful should be Finland, which is in a week and a half. Wow. No! It's a week now! Time is flying.
So I fly back to the UK on Tuesday and hopefully I'll fly to Finland either Saturday or Sunday and get ready for the event.
But it's been sort of tough because the future is a little bit unknown, so don't know fully what's going to happen. So it's kind of hard to really prepare and plan for it.
