I shot a first round of two under par 70 in the 72-hole $8 million BMW PGA Championship on the DP World Tour.
It was strange day weather wise with showers all day. No one got an advantage or disadvantage, it was the same for all the field, both the early starters and the late starters. At times there were some pretty heavy showers.
There has been a lot of rain in London over the last few weeks, and today we had preferred lies on the fairways, which is pretty unusual these days on Tour. The greens have been impregnated with a ‘SubAir’ system and this means we would not have any flooded greens and would not be not be coming off the golf course for any suspensions in play from rain, only for lightning. A lot of rulings for casual water, on both the fairways and rough as well as challenges with water in the bunkers resulted in a longer than normal pace of play today.
So, we all had to adapt to soft fairways and to keep the ball in play on the short grass.
Solid round
My round was fairly solid and uneventful with 14 pars, three birdies on holes 1, 4 and 18 and a bogey on hole 8.
I got off to a great start with a birdie three on hole one, measuring 473 yards by hitting my second shot from 166 yards to 8 feet and 5 inches for an opening three, on what is arguably one of the toughest first holes on the DP World Tour.
Nothing great and nothing too bad is the ‘School Report’ for my round today.
My playing partners: Hurly Long (Ger) shot a three under par 69, one better than me, and Ryder Cup vice-caption Eduardo Molinari (Italy) shot a level par 72, not a bad threeball to watch.
Tied 48th place
As I post this article from the Player’s Lounge, the leaders are on eight under par having completed their rounds, the English duo of Tommy Fleetwood and Andy Sullivan, with plenty of golfers still on the course completing their first rounds and my 70 saw me in tied 48th place.
It is always nice to acknowledge our sponsors; Tour, tournament and personal, and it is nice to see Emirates as a support sponsor this week, as well as DP World as the title sponsor of the season long Tour, I am very proud of my association and links to Dubai. In addition, representatives of my Dubai-based sponsors White Eagle Sport walked most of my round today, despite the non-Dubai weather.
My second round tee time tomorrow (Friday) is at 1.05pm in Match 38.
Wish me luck, let me dry everything off overnight, ready for tomorrow’s second round.
See you then!
— Adrian Meronk is a Dubai-based 29 year-old, from Poland and is currently eighth in the DP World Tour Rankings and 60th in the OWGR. He is sponsored by White Eagle Sports, an events company also based in Dubai.
