I was thinking of giving you a insight of what goes through my mind on a day like today. Had a lot going on today, both good and bad things. I shot 2 over par and went from 4th to 40th place, but I’m still happy as I’m sitting here writing.

– Yesterday’s 66 was fresh in my mind but since I’m pretty self critical I wasn’t happy with how I hit the ball. I live by the saying, ”A good swing gets better under pressure, a bad one gets worse”. I was comfortable yesterday that’s why I played pretty good, and got off to a good start and everything felt quite easy. I was still not happy with the the ball strike but managed to hit a lot of greens and keep good momentum all throughout the round. Ok and long driving made it all a bit easier as well.

– Today, I was excited to play and felt better in the warm-up than yesterday. A calm early morning made low scoring possible. I had very high expectations. I thought since I was still not overly happy with how I played yesterday, I knew I could shoot low again since it felt better today. High expectations are great but they can also make you play bad since you put extra pressure on yourself and harder to focus. I wasn’t focused enough and hit a sandwedge in the bunker and started with a double-bogey 6 on the first hole. Wow! The last thing I thought of! And now, being such a scorable day, I had to make up shots. All I could think of the next few holes was how to make birdies. When I TRY TO HARD, I never play well. Let the good rounds happen. Don’t force them would be my plan from here on. Off course, I got two good birdie chances right away but didn’t convert. Got away with some bad shots on the next few holes and saved pars. I was really frustrated and felt like nothing was going my way. I started complaining about bad lies and the unfairness of the different lengths on the roughs and such things. I never make excuses, but today I had a lot of them. Made birdie on 8 and thought good things were coming my way. Not. Two bad bogeys in a row after that made me boil inside. I was so frustrated and started doubting everything I was working at. Was I doing the right things? Had I been training good during the break? Did my swing develop in the way I want and at the speed I want? All these doubts were creeping into my head and I felt so down. A nice birdie on 15 and pars in made me at least feel a bit better and I wasn’t going to destroy my locker. 

– Straight after the round, I went through what had happened and figured out that most of it was my attitude’s fault. And my putting which worked greast yesterday but when you force the putting it doesn’t work. If I could learn to play one shot at a time and one hole at a time and really just focus on that it wouldn’t matter if I had started with a birdie or a 10 today. My focus would still have been the same. There is nothing worse in golf than being frustrated and start to make excuses. Keep your focus and good things will come sooner or later. 

– A good lunch and a nice little break made me all of a sudden excited to practice and work on the things I needed to work on. Although, a lot of today’s big errors were mental, I still had to the ”golf related” work first. Saw Pete again and went over my errors and my bad swing feelings. He comforted me saying, ”things take a long time to perfect, be patient ”. An hour hitting balls and an hour and a half practicing short game made me feel a bit tired of golf and needed to get my head cleared and get my energy back. My biggest flaw as a golfer is that I want to improve constantly. I want to be good yesterday. It’s probably a good thing as well but I never have time to really settle with a swing or a swing feeling before I got something else going. I needed to get off the golf course and see the boys in the gym.

– There is nothing better than going hard in the gym and hang out with your friends after a frustrating day. We push each other in a way that is hard to do on the golf course. To get pumped up on the putting green maybe doesn’t always have a positive affect. In the gym, it does. When we left the gym, my only feeling was satisfaction and I felt like another great day was over. I was working towards my goal all day and I got to experience a lot of different feelings and I got to hang out with fun people. 

Abu Dhabi pics.

Back tomorrow and hope you guys are great! Thanks for all the support! It makes me very happy!!!:)

Alex