Today was Day 1 of the TPC Sawgrass Major for the Golf Channel Am Tour. We started on the 10th hole of the Valley course.
It was a tough day for me. I shot an 87 (+15) to end in last place for my flight after round 1. While I made a few short game mistakes and my putting left a lot to be desired, the biggest issue of the day was hitting my driver. I hit 5 tee shots into the water, which isn’t all that difficult on a course with water on every hole, and you can throw in a few more penalty strokes for the 3 or 4 OB’s I had. Take all those penalties away, and my day wasn’t that bad.
I felt like I was concentrating on the right swing thoughts, but my body just didn’t feel right or that it wanted me to execute. I felt tired from the very beginning, and the extreme heat and humidity didn’t help the situation. I’m looking at it as a really bad off day with the intent to get rest and come back feeling good tomorrow.
Mentally, I didn’t focus as well as I should, but after thinking about it post-round I don’t think I arrived at the course with a mental approach that works for me (intense focus every minute). I had mental lapses throughout the day, and I let a few bad shots get to me early on.
Perhaps next week after this is all over I can go through the round shot-by-shot. I have it all marked on my scorecard, and if not I can remember just about every shot anyway. There will definitely be some lessons to be learned.
Tomorrow we hit the Stadium course. My tee time is nice and early at 7:30am – first off the block, which is nice in some respects because we experienced some ridiculously slow play today. Regardless, it’ll be nice to set our own tempo.
I expect to play well tomorrow. I have some lessons from today that I will be addressing tomorrow, whether that’s the mental game or my pre-round preparation. The key, again, will be the tee shots. I don’t mind getting into trouble and trying to save par, but I need to minimize the bad tee shots. Straight and short is better than long and wrong.
I worked on my putting in the hotel room tonight, since I pushed a lot of my putts today. After working on the range, specifically with my driver and woods, I’ll be spending some quality time on the putting green before the round tomorrow.