Morning Person

I wasn't always a morning person in my younger days. I was a great man for a sleep in at the weekends, but there is a wonderful cure for this. They are known as children and mine are early birds! Almost every night we will be woken at some stage between 4am and 6am. You do get used to it though and there are percs as you can get up and walk the dog, water the plants (summer time), catch up on work or my personal favourite get an early morning round of golf in.

Cold Shower

So the early mornings aren't all bad at all, especially the ones where I can squeeze a round of golf in like this morning. I got around in 1 hour 50 minutes, meaning I was home and logged into work just after 9am. I even made the lunches for our kids at 6:20am just to make life easier for my wife, which is important too of course.

Speaking of work, we had a talk recently from a professor in Cambridge who was telling us all about healthy eating, healthy gut micro biome amongst other things and one thing that he touched on was cold water immersion and the benefits of it. Indeed my brother and brother in law have been waxing lyrical about this for quite some time and both swim in the Atlantic every weekday morning at 6:30am and rave about the benefits. I've joined them on a few occasions and right enough it's a fantastic way to wake up and you certainly feel energised after coming back out of the water.

It's a bit of a spin in the car though (10 to 15 minutes each way), and quite an undertaking, so anyway the health guru from Cambridge (now living in California I might add - an important detail) told us that he takes a cold shower every morning for 60 to 90 seconds and finds it extremely good for his start to the day, so I decided to give that a go as well, and I must say it's been fantastic and now forms part of my morning routine.

It was tricky the first few times, but now it's just standard and I just get straight in. It was good that I started in Winter too when the water was at its coldest, unlike Mr. Cambridge and his nice warm Californian water! I must say though I would recommend it. It gives me great energy and wakes me up entirely. It also forces the body to work harder and pump warmer blood to the extremities which is good for circulation. Apparently it helps people to not get sick as much (colds, flus etc) which I have had none of this year. Some people say it burns fat also, which I cannot confirm or deny, but what I do know is it feels good and the warm water feels all the nicer afterwards. I tend to stay under for 2 to 3 minutes, one minute under, wash my hair for 1 minute, rinse, then another minute and then I turn it to hot. Try it sometime folks and let me know how ye get on. Honestly I'm not mental!

Today's Game

Right so you're all wondering how the game went today aren't ye? Of course ye are! Well it wasn't too bad. I played quick, so didn't spend much time lining up putts or the like and got around in under 2 hours and that included stopping to take these frosty early morning photos along the way.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised by my round, well most of it. The 3 triple bogeys were disappointing and on two I split the fairway with a good drive and got in trouble with poor second shots. On balance though 90 shots or net 74 was pretty decent shooting and I reckon I three putted around 4 or 5 greens too, so if I can brush up on my putting there is a good round nearby, as tee to green I was very solid. Now to be fair I was playing off the yellow tees. The white tees are going back out on Sunday, so that will be the real test. Here is my scorecard from today.

Next Post

The Phoenix Open, The Farmers Insurance Open, The Northern Trust. If you mention these to a non golfer they won't know what you're talking about. However if you mention Augusta, Magnolia Lane or the Masters to those same people it's a different story. Their eyes will light up and most will tune in on Sunday evening if they are in any way interested in sport. You see even those indifferent to golf will appreciate the Masters for whatever reason. Maybe it's the Magnolia trees? maybe it's the green jacket? Maybe it's the regular carnage around Amen corner? Who knows?

So, as you'll have guessed by now, my next post will be about the Masters. I will cover the course, the history, the records, the players and my picks for who will feature. I look forward to this week every year as I love golf, but there is something extra special about the Masters.

Will Hedeki win back to back or will the green jacket go elsewhere this year? Tune back in next week to hear about my tips. These were my 5 tips last year before a ball was hit.

4 from 5 made the cut and one of them won it and he was a 45/1 shot! If you had a flutter on my picks each way you'd have done very well as the bookmakers pay out on the top ten. These were their finishing positions:

Matsuyama 1st (45/1)
Schauffele 3rd (26/1)
Finau 10th (35/1)
Casey 26th (35/1)
Berger CUT (60/1)

So keep an eye out for my next SportsTalkSocial post before the Masters starts next Thursday.

All of the photos used in this post are my own

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.

Peace Out