It appears that I might have failed to take one small, yet rather significant, detail into account when I was starting this challenge.The fact is, tournament golf bares little resemblance to regular golf and with the culmination of this exercise being the Gosling’s Invitational in November, that might prove to be a bit of an issue.As a hacker, playing competitive golf is not something I do that frequently. The game I play tends to involve beer, a muligan or three for both the front and back nine, some colourful language, and a liberal approach to rule 13, from the Rules of Golf, ‘Ball Played as it Lies’.Rule 13’s general interpretation (13.1) states quite simply: The ball must be played as it lies, except as otherwise provided in the Rules. Straight forward and easy enough to understand, it prevents players, or more accurately the less talented among us, from moving the ball from out behind bushes, shrubs, or any other less than fun place we might have found ourselves in.As with all rules however, it doesn’t stop there, the next sub section goes on to talk about not improving the lie of stance or swing by moving branches, earth, or grounding the club.There are exceptions, but as with the rules themselves they are too numerous to mention and become more and more complicated the further you get into them.The point to all of this of course is that the average golfer playing a social round with friends is less encumbered by these rules than his more serious counterpart. That all changes when the social golfer signs up to play in a serious event, such as the Bermuda Open, for example.It turns out that officials tend to get quite sniffy about the rules of the game being strictly adhered to during a tournament, which means that scorecards which don’t often suffer the indignities of a nine or 10 can quickly become littered with them. Penalty strokes pile up quicker than you might imagine.Throw in pin positions seemingly chosen by satan, tees pushed all the way back, and the potential for truly miserable weather and the ‘fair weather’ golfer can quickly get thrown out of their comfort zone.Fortunately I did not suffer from too many high scores during my Open excursion and two rounds of 97 during the rain-shortened event were not as awful as they might sound.A couple of eights aside I managed to play bogey golf for most of the 36-holes, which hints at a consistency that has been sorely lacking in the past. Certainly my lessons with Chris Grantier are paying off.The real key though to scoring well is managing the golf course, learning when to hit an iron off the tee instead of the driver, knowing when it is better to be short than long, and understanding that the game is all about the next shot.Having an appreciation for these things and putting them into practice are, of course, two entirely different things. Playing successfully out of the bunker is still something of a mystery to me, but I’m sure Chris will help me put that right.What I’m more concerned with right now is what those 97s will have done to my handicap, which is supposed to be going down, but, which, I have a sneaking suspicion, will have taken a slight upswing in recent weeks.