A WIN AT THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN 24/25-10-2009

The AusOpen (which is our National Matchplay Championships) was held over the weekend at the Diamond Valley Archery Club in Melbourne. It consisted of two parts over two days with a FITA90(36 arrows at each distance 90, 70, 50 and 30mtrs) on the first day to rank us for starting position on the second days matchplay elimination.

I was very pleased with the way day 1 panned out, 90mtrs did not score as high as I would have liked but I shot all arrows well and ended up with 333... 70mtrs was great and I felt very comfortable and relaxed and shot 354 which was the top score by 2 points for the distance. 50mtrs also went well and I shot 350 and for the final 30mtr distance I shot a perfect 360. My total FITA90 score was 1397 and this ranked me second behind Pat Coghlan(1406). The 1397 also gave me my third qualifying score for the Commonwealth Games squad.

Day 2, we were all expecting the wind to turn up and we were not disappointed... the wind came in gusts and made for some difficult shooting at times...but even though the wind made shooting that little bit harder, I managed to win my way match by match into the final against Pat Coghlan.

The final was great and I had a lot of support from fellow archers watching on... the match was shot in 4 lots of 3 arrow ends and I shot 27 to 28(Pat), 28 to 28(Pat), 28 to 26(Pat) and a perfect 30 to 28(Pat) and the final total was 113 to Pat's 110.

I was obviously very happy with the result being it was my first National Tournament for 2 years... I do still feel like I can improve on my shooting and I am looking forward to making some adjustments and hopefully shooting some big scores.

Thanks to all my sponsors for their support.

Cheers

Clint