A little colder this morning and the weather forecast is not great! But it feels like its changing all the time here in the mountains so maybe some good weather in between the bad! Let´s hope at least! 

Felt nice yesterday and holed some nice long putts which feels sooooo good! 6 under gets me in tied 3rd and I´m very happy with that! So now, it´s just to get out there and focus again! 

Shared a courtesy car back from the course yesterday with a player from the Phillipines. He was so happy to be up here in the alps because of the clean air. It really is nice and fresh, specially today when its so cold:)

A little tired of bacon and eggs now, I think it´s my 18th day in a row now…

See you!

Just chilling in the lounge with the other players that have late tee-times today. Everybody brings their computer and just trying to find new anything interesting on the internet to kill some time!

There is a junior tournament that´s held each year at my home club in Sweden, Haninge GK, and since I´ve played there my whole life they named it Alex Noren Junior Open which was very nice of them. I´ve always loved that club and that was my kindergarden when I was little and I still love coming out there to practice with my old friends and coaches. The tournament is included in a series of tournaments for the junior girls and boys. This coming year I would like to add something to the tournament and I have a few thoughts on how to do it. There are many things you can do such as improving the course quality, have better prices, have more people helping out etc. Also, I think it could be a good thing to make the tournament into a little ”mini-golf camp”. Maybe have small training sessions before the tournament or have a mental- or pysical coach to come in and speak for the players and give a few tips.

If you guys have any ideas on how to improve the tournament I would love to hear them. I think there are a lot of things you can do for the juniors to help them get better and be better prepared for the future. 

See you!

Woke up early to walk down to the course. We stay only 15 min away. 4 min if you catch a ride. Looked like Lord of the Rings outside the hotel…was as cold as it looked.

Early Pro-Am tee time and it was a nice round, little slow but Pro-Ams are not known to be fast. Nice to see the course again since this is a tricky one…the more you play it the better it is I believe. Yesterday was all about chipping around plenty of balls and getting to know all possible shots on the course. Today is all about getting into tournament and scoring mode. That´s why I like playing on wednesdays, because you get to play the day before the tournament starts and get to see more what the course will play like. Some courses can change a lot from tuesday to thursday, especially links courses that can dry up a lot or get softer if there is a lot of rain coming on tuesday night or wednesday.

You know you are when in the alps when the caddie rather looks like he wants to go skiing!

Sitting in the player´s lounge right now preparing for the gym session with ”Pierre the vein man”. Just stuffing myself with protein food and drinking a lot of water. One of my goals in the gym is to be able to do 20 chin-ups. I´m at 14 now. Come on:) 

Some pics from the Pro-Am…

These camera men are following my caddie Colin Byrne and they are making a documentary about him and his life on tour. It´s good when my caddie is a lot more famous than I am…:) Gotta change that! Come on:)

Little bit of chipping before the gym to get the right feel for tomorrow…love chipping with my lob wedge…I have to change it out all the time cause I wear the grooves out.

Bye…

Met my caddie at ten this morning and got some good shortgame done…a lot of putting. Short putts for the confidence and longer putts to get the speed of the greens right. Then a little bit of technique training on the range. I´ve always loved golf technique and sometimes too much! I can easily get stuck into it and not practice the rest of the game enough. Although, I believe working on the technique is very important if you want to go forward. My swing has always been a little from the inside, resulting in a draw if I hit it good, but the bad shots have been too bad when they go either straight right or they start right and then hooks. That´s why I´ve been working quite hard at straightening my shots by trying to hit fades instead. The goal is to be able to swing naturally and the ball will go straight. No draw, no fade. If I want to hit fade or draw, off course I should be able to do it but I want the standard shot to be straight.  

I have tried pretty much everything to straighten out my shots and last week I started closing my club face at adress and that made me do something unconciously so the ball goes a little straighter and the swing looks more ”on-plane” than before. 

Here the club gets a little steeper and more ”on-plane” than it usually is. The shaft usually goes trough my elbow in this frame. The club is a little shut but I had it shut at adress so it´s not as bad as it looks:) It makes my finish a little stronger and shorter as well like you see in the next picture.

Played nine holes after and my caddie Colin tries to get me to play the practice round like Retief Goosen does. Colin caddied for Retief for 5 years and learnt a lot from him, which is good for me!!! Retief playes by himself in the prectice round and chips and putts for 15-20 minutes on each green to get the feeling of the greens and to work on the shots needed for the course. If you add up 15 minutes a´hole times 9 holes, means that I spent 135 minutes which is 2 hours and 15 minutes of short game practice. You can only do this if there is enough room on the course but to get that much short game practice is great, specially on the course.

Then it was time to workout with my strength coach Pierre! Really looked forward to it and it was a good workout. Beat some of my old records which is always a good feeling. BUT, I got seriously jealous when I saw all the veins on Pierre´s arms and decided to compare arms and here is the result. He has a lot of veins popping out and I got none!!! But, he said ”in a few years you will also get them”, which felt great…NOT…I want them now…:)

Pierre´s arms…

My arms…

Not even a sign of a vein…but there are more important things I guess:) 

Nice to see some snow in the summer…

See you:)

Had a long travelling day yesterday even though it´s not very far but when you head for the mountains, it´s not likely there will be a an airport close. Fly to Geneva, train to Sierre, then car up to Crans-Montana. This is Lake Geneva taken from the train.

Then finally at the hotel, it was very average! Last week was a little too good so my standards went up…this place hasnt´been redone since the 70´s and it looks like it hasn´t been cleaned since the 90´s. But, since we are in the alps, they have a down comforter which is very nice. Trying to fix the luggage here, feels like I have unpacked a few times before…but never get into the habit of using the wardrobes:)

Good views up here…

My strength coach, Pierre Johansson, came in yesterday and it´s time to beef up! Started with a big steak to get a good start for the week…so now it´s just to train as hard as he tells me:)!!!

”Biffa” means to get big in swedish…

Come on:)

Time for some golf traning now. See you soon!