I’m absolutely shattered after a long Accenture match play championship in Marana Arizona. Congratulations to Ian on his first PGA Tour victory. He played great golf and had too much for me in the final. I felt it was an exceptional display of short game and putting from him which was key to his success. Although I lost, my victory was the fact that I played 114 tournament holes in 5 days and 132 in 6 days if you count the practice round on Tuesday, without any discomfort or restrictions from last years injury.
With every golf event there are mistakes that I need to fix. My coach Peter Kostis calls it an autopsy. I always cringe slightly when he says we need to sit down and discuss the week but it is a necessary evil and one that makes me better. The autopsy hasn’t taken place yet but it will sometime early this week so we can get to work on fixing the faults.
A couple of weeks ago when I was asked about goals for the year and questions about qualifying for the Ryder Cup were raised I played down the topic. I repeated that I’m focusing on one tournament at a time and trying to get back into the form or better than the beginning of last year. Having a taste of matchplay and obviously a good run last week it brought back great memories from the Ryder Cup. During my quarter final match Stewart Cink and I reminisced about David Howell signing Copa Cabana at the K Club in the post match festivities. I can’t deny that I want to be part of this years team and the points from last week have moved me up from nowhere to somewhere. However I have to put this to the back of my mind again and focus on winning tournaments. Good things happened in the months after last years runner-up finish at the match play and I’m hoping the same will happen this year.
This week is a off week however yesterday I had a 4am wake up so I could fly to Houston for the Shell Houston Open Media day which I was honoured to take part in as the defending champion. Today I’m product testing for Nike which is always cool. I’ve got some new shoes to test and I’ve been told I’ll get to hit some new woods that the R&D team have been working on.
Schedule for the next few weeks will be the Honda Classic, WGC CA Championship followed by a couple of weeks off and the then Shell Houston Open, The Masters and the Heritage. Honda is an event I haven’t played in quite a while and on a golf course I’m not familiar with. PGA National has a reputation as a tough course so I look forward to the challenge.
On a random note, I’ve just started the Andre Agassi autobiography Open on the plane yesterday. I’ll let you know what I think when I read a few pages.
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Speak soon, Paul.
