Of course, given how badly I played over the weekend, it couldn’t have been worse. I took Uber to the Doha Golf Club early this morning.
There are two courses here: the Championship Course where the LIV professionals play, and the Academy Course where the non-professionals (that’s me) play. Actually, I accidently played the 1st hole of the championship course and saw a couple of others. I think I probably could have played it but by the time I finished my nine holes on the Academy course it was already 104 degrees so I would have never been able to finish the 18 holes.
The topography of this course was the same as ours at the Ranch with the fairway lined with desert. The best part was…. no water!! There was a pond on the 18th of the Championship course but nothing on the 9-hole course.
The bunkers are also like ours with hard packed sand which is much easier to get out of than the 3 inches of real bunker sand at Fairway in Joburg. My clubs were lady’s which helped a lot. They were much lighter and shorter, so I didn’t have as much trouble with my swing.
As a result of all this, I shot a 45 on a par 34 course so I was only 11 over par. That’s a very nice score for me. I really wish I could tell my pals from Sunday. They would have been impressed.
After my round (only took 90 minutes) I went to the beautiful restaurant for breakfast. It was not even 9:00am and all I had before I left the hotel was a Nutella covered donut. It was pretty good, but I needed real food.
Breakfast was very yummy, and it gave me a chance to cool off after my round. Here’s a video I took from the restaurant veranda.
After breakfast was Uber back to the hotel where I rested for a few hours then it was off to find someplace to ship a box back home. I wanted to lighten my load for when the girls and I are on trains through Europe. The concierge told me about a DHL office in the City Center Mall, so it was back in an Uber. The driver was a bit chatty and asked what I was doing in Doha. After I gave him the Reader’s Digest version of the last 3 weeks, he said that as a solo female traveler approaching 60 (he got an extra tip for that) I was quite brave to do all of those things, especially being so close to lions. He seemed like a nice guy.
At the mall my first stop was to the DHL where I sent back 15 pounds worth of safari clothes and supplies, things I purchased in Africa and my golf stuff. My bag weighed just over 34 pounds in Joburg, so I lightened it by almost half. It should be a breeze for me (or the girls) to lift now.
The mall was ginormous. It reminded me of Mall of America without the rides. But there was a fun zone for the kids.
As well as a giant bouncy thing in the middle of the mall.
Between the 3 food courts, the full-service restaurants, and the other fast-food places scattered throughout the mall, there had to have been at least 70 places to eat.
I decided on the Shanghai Gardens, a full-service restaurant. I hadn’t had Chinese food in ages, so it was a nice change.
The restaurant had the coolest way to serve food… KettyBot. I was so disappointed when a real person brought me my lunch that they sent my leftovers to me on the robot. So cool!
Packing tonight was a piece of cake and my roller duffle is a third empty. I have a 5:30 pickup (assuming the driver shows up this time) for my 8:00am flight to Amsterdam. The last 3 weeks has been incredible, but I can’t wait to see my girls on Friday.
Talk soon.