Rock follows advice, hopes good fortune awaits

By Robert Rock,
Special for WorldGolf.com

Last week's event in Scotland - Diageo Championship at Gleneagles - was a disaster for me.

I was struggling with a shoulder injury and my mood was not helped by shooting well over par. So I gave in to the injury and took my doctor's advice to rest up for a few days.

I've just shot seven under at the Belfry in a friendly round, which is my best round of the year so far, so the rest appears to have done me good.

Last week at Gleneagles, you were hard pressed to realise there was a golf event on. It may not be big news in the USA, but over here in Europe we have the 2004 European football (soccer) championships under way.

Last week loads of the guys were discussing where they could go to watch the games on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday was the first game, and while they were prepared to miss that the English guys certainly weren't prepared to miss the big one on Sunday night, when England met France.

There are a lot of soccer fans on the European Tour and the English boys in particular were feeling very confident. The French guys didn't say much in the run-up to the game but you can be sure they'll have plenty to say at this week's Aa St Omer Open and next week's French Open following the dramatic victory.

Let's hope a French guy doesn't win either of those - we'd never hear the end of it.

Ian Poulter's a big Arsenal fan and most of the Arsenal side are French so I don't know who he was supporting on Sunday. At least he won't have to put up with the ribbing in France as he will be at Shinnecock Hills for the U.S. Open this week along with some more of our up-and-coming stars like Justin Rose and Paul Casey.

From what I've seen of the course it looks fantastic. But I don't feel any jealousy towards the guys who are going out there to play. Good luck to them. They're playing well and deserve the opportunity. I'm way off that at the moment - perhaps in a few years' time'

I would have had to miss last week's event and travelled to the U.S. to attempt to qualify which would have been an expensive - and as it turned out - painful process.

U.S. Open courses are traditionally among the hardest on the circuit and it's certainly no place for a rookie. If you're not at the top of your game you'll be shooting high 70 scores and that's no fun - as I can confirm.

Talking of Opens, I've just had through the roll call for the qualifiers for this year's Open Championship at Royal Troon.

There's new qualification rules this year with international and regional qualifiers for anybody with world-ranking points, which means anybody from the Challenge Tour up.

I'm playing 36 holes on two courses at Sunningdale on June 28 and the list of players taking part is amazing; it's going to be really tough. Monty, Justin Rose - basically anybody who's outside the world's top 50 will be there making it very difficult to pick up one of the few qualifying places available.

I'm just hoping my Belfry form carries through.

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• British Masters next up for pro Robert Rock
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