FIRST PERSON

British Masters next up for pro Robert Rock

By Robert Rock,
Special for WorldGolf.com

I'm looking forward to this week's event. It's the British Masters at the Marriott Forest of Arden, where I finished fourth last year -- my best finish yet on the European Tour.

I was lucky enough to get an invite through the hard work of my manager, Steve Bainbridge, and I repaid him by earning my biggest cheque yet. And that went a long way toward earning me my Tour card this season.

This week all the talk has been about the rain in Italy during last week's Italian Open at Castello di Tolcinasco.

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It was horrendous. We only played three rounds and the players were getting really frustrated. Not because of the weather -- that can't be helped. But nobody was telling us what was happening.

We didn't know whether we would have to come back on the Monday -- which I'm glad we didn't -- or whether the event was to be shortened.

There was even talk of it being a two-round competition, but obviously the tournament directors have a responsibility to the sponsors and presumably if the event was halved, the prize money would be affected.

The delays almost cost Matthew Cort dearly early on. During one of the early delays he was chatting in the clubhouse, when the announcement was made that we were to restart.

But the announcement wasn't relayed to all parts of the clubhouse and poor Matt didn't hear it.

So when they got back out on to the course he was nowhere to be seen. In the end officials just managed to get him to the tee on time by rushing him out in a buggy.

Had he not arrived he would have had shots docked and it could have proved expensive. That would have been doubly annoying for him because his lateness wasn't his fault.

Many of us had a flight booked from Malpensa to Birmingham at 6 p.m., as that's the airport for this week's event and it made sense to come straight here.

But we all missed that because play didn't recommence until around 6.30 p.m. after another rain delay.

As you can imagine there was a lot of grumbling going on among the pro ranks. I do feel sympathy for the event organisers as they can't control the weather, but the nature of professional sportsman is we only see it from our perspective.

In the end, a few of us drove to Bergamo for a flight to Stansted and hired a car when we got there to get us up to the midlands.

There were a few laughs during the many interruptions though. Mark Roe and Ian Poulter were playing soccer on the putting green to keep everybody's spirits up, and nearby a couple of the Australian lads set up a cricket pitch.

Heaven knows what the groundstaff made of it all. But the tedium had to be relieved somehow.

What did surprise me was the quality of the scoring. Winner Graeme McDowell was 19 under for a three-round competition -- and that on a long course. I thought I played quite well to finish 5 under, but that's still 14 adrift of Graeme.

Last week I suggested Ian Poulter would be a good bet for the title and if it had gone the full distance, I really feel he would have been in there battling for it at the death.

As it was he was only five shots off Graeme.

This week I've been practising for the British Masters with Nick Dougherty; he's a good bloke who I've become friendly with since joining the Tour.

He's just come back from Japan -- and he loved it out there. He and Trevor Immelman were funded to travel out and compete in an event.

And poor Nick felt really bad because he didn't make the cut. The sponsors paid for him to go out there and obviously thought he would be there for the duration. And nine times out of 10 he would have been.

When we were standing around in Italy I was asked if there was anything special I do in the wet.

The only thing I would advise is you take a couple of clubs extra when selecting and swing gently. When the weather's as bad as it was in Italy, it doesn't matter how good your grips and gloves are you will always lose some grip on the club, so it pays to prepare for it.

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