Some more pics from the last few days.

16th tee box. Dogleg left short par 4. Morning due.

13th tee, par 5. Downhill and this hole is my best chance for a ”worse ball birdie”:)

Playing in to the 9th green. One of the toughest holes on the course. Green is very ondulated and slopes off from all angles. 3 over this day at worse ball for nine holes. I really want to break par. Would be the coolest thing. Something to brag about for the grandchildren:) Or not…Anyway, the club is looking more on plane here I think. I have done a lot of drills to get the club more open in this position and it’s getting closer to where I want it. A few more days of all-around training here at Black Mountain then I’ll be heading out for the Royal Trophy. 

Mr. Schauman in good form. The physical phenomenon. 3 weeks in the weight room and already super strong. Edfors is trying to come up with exercises where he think he’ll fail but no no…Wille is too strong…

Mr. Edfors on the range. 

Hua Hin main street. A lot of decorations for the King. 

Sweet when the boss of the store gets a cool pic:)

Night market action…

Another 6.15 AM tee off. Maybe a nap after…or a few strong coffees. A little tired, not used to these times now after a chilled christmas break. 

Back soon.

Last few days in pictures…hectic days of training here so blogging is not great but I’ll be better soon. I seriously love this place. I’ve never been this motivated to train in my life. You got everything in front of you and when we stay at the golf resort it makes it so convenient.

Also played the best I’ve ever played today. 2 over for 15 holes (started on the 4th due to a busy course in the morning) playing worse ball. So so happy! We also had the toughest gym session I’ve ever experienced. Edfors had the great idea of trippling the usual session’s sets to see what we were made of. Me, Schauman and Edfors helped each other and at the New Year’s dinner we couldn’t move. I still can’t but i don’t want to let the guys know that:)

We play early here just after 6 AM when the sun rises. It’s so calm and somewhat cool at that time and when you are done with 18 holes at 10 AM, life feels pretty good!!!

Thai massage now. 8 Euros for an hour of pain. They step on you during the massage I heard…

More pics soon. Ciao.

Started out in total darkness heading for the gym.

Black Mountain for real:)

This is how it looked like when we had breakfast. It’s playable at 6.15 AM. The restaurant was full at 6.00 AM because the best time to play in Thailand is in the morning when the temperature is perfect.

The sun eventually came out.

Full sunshine on the 12th tee box. Crazy cool looking water hazard!

As a change, I followed my schedule today and it all went well. Wilhelm Schauman tore the weight room apart as he must have been living in the weight room and been praying to the weight lifting gods constantly for the last three weeks. He just started serious gym training and I feel like I haven’t improved one bit when I saw him in there today. Edfors still beats the crap out of us but life goes on…:)

Sleep time. I’m gonna try to sleep until 4.30 AM. Jet lag is a great thing if you want to train a lot.

See you soon!

What a place!!!

View from the apartments.

Edfors loves it here as well. They have all the facilities you need to have a great practice week. It’s close to Hua-Hin but far enough so there are no distractions for me. I can go to bed early and wake up fresh. The best formula I think. The jet-lag has already kicked in and I’m wide awake at 2.30AM. Great. Not. 2 more hours then I can get up and run on the treadmill. Sweet.

The finish is supurb here and the grass is cut so tightly on the fairways. It’s great to practice the wedges from. 

The clubhouse.

Back soon. 

2 more hours of sleep. Come on.

Laying here in my bed in Hua Hin, Thailand and the time is 7.50 PM. I’m exhausted after a long day-flight down here from Stockholm and I only slept about two hours. My goal today was to stay awake until about now and then try to sleep a whole night. On, the plane down, I had a lot of time to think about golf and training. I also read some very interesting things in some magazines about just training. The most interesting thing was an interview in the Swedish magazine ”MAN” with the former world champion wrestler Martin Lidberg. 

Like I’ve said many times before, I easily get impressed and motivated about hearing and reading about other sportsmen’s training regimen. Martin Lidberg’s regimen is among the craziest I’ve ever heard of. First of all, training and exercising wrestling has to be one of the toughest things you can do. Second of all, when Martin had won everything, he decided to change weight class for the World Championships in -03. He went from the 82 kg to the 96kg class. Everybody laughed at him when he decided to do so but he didn’t care what others thought and started training harder than ever before. He worked out for 4 hours a day to put on the necessary kilograms. He was always on the line of overtraining himself. One time, he did. He had a black out and was hospitalized for a few days. The doctor ordered him to have a longer rest and not start training until he was perfectly rested and fit again. Martin didn’t listen and trained even harder. He said his only goal each day was to survive the brutal training he ahead of him. Do I need to say that he won the 2003 World Championships in the 96 kg weight class. ”

So, I decided to work a little harder and get used to working hard. Now, when I go pretty hard I get easily tired and have to rest a little to feel fresh again. I want to be able to train hard and still feel fresh. I know for a fact, that I train way less than wrestlers for example. The only difference is that they are use to training hard. With this new motivation and desire to get better I have a plan for my little training week here in Thailand at Black Mountain Golf Club. Here it is:

30th Dec- 04.45 AM Running 30 minutes plus abs and flexibility

  06.15 AM 18 worseball 

  12.00 AM-16.00 PM Golf training (putting, shortgame, range or playing on the course with the other                                        players)

   16.45 PM-17.45 PM Workout

31st Dec- Same as above except no running in the morning

1st Jan- Same as 30th

2nd Jan- Same as 31st 

3rd Jan- Same as 30th

4th Jan- Same as 31st

5th Jan- No gym and only casual golf training. Heading to Royal Trophy in the evening.

My goal is to accomplish this. I have never followed a schedule before but I’ll be very proud of myself if I can follow this one.

Hope all is good with you guys!

Back soon with pics from this cool place!

Got some happy news before leaving today!

Golf.se had a ”Swedish Golfer of the Year Poll” and I got 3rd place! I was surprised by that and so so happy! Feels great heading out to practice after seeing that! I have to work a lot harder and better now to move up the rankings for next year’s poll. 

I’m sorry the text is in Swedish but you can translate it easy on Google if you want. 

All the best!

Alex

Just took a swing video so you can see what I’ve been working on the last few weeks.

Back very soon with some more.

Alex

All the christmas celebrations are over and I’m feeling great!!! Family time is fun! Have had three days in a row without harder golf practice, just an hour here and there. I’ve done a lot of gym and cardio work though and feeling fresher than ever. Always, when I stop practicing golf for a little while, my whole body relaxes and gets energized and start craving for golf again. Taking a short break can sometimes be the best medicine if you are tired or just been playing bad for a while. After a few days of just gym work or total relaxation you will feel fresh and ready to go again. Back when I was a junior, I used to caddie once a year and that was great motivation as well as a good break in a hectic summer season.  

Playing golf as a junior in Sweden, the season was very short. It started in early April and ended in October depending on where in Sweden you lived. Maybe the long winter break was good for us to get away from golf and try other sports. Maybe it wasn’t the best for our golf careers. Who knows? All I know is that I’m happy I tried a lot of sports to see what sport I liked the most and also get the all-around training. The sport I miss the most is skiing. Not that I competed in skiing but I skied a lot as a kid. All Swedish kids do. Now, I’m too scared to go all out in the slopes and risking getting injured. I like golf too much for that. I get enough adrenalin kicks from playing tournament golf nowadays but I love the feeling of being in the mountains and the freedom that comes with it. 

But, now I have a few great weeks ahead of me. First, a training week in Hua-Hin, Thailand with some other players and straight after that ”The Royal Trophy” is coming up in Bangkok.  I’m so looking forward to get nervous again! After Thailand, the European Tour starts in the Middle East with tournaments in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai. If I play well in those, I’m heading over to America for some great tournaments. Hold your thumbs please:)

Once again, I haven’t planned my upcoming training camp in Thailand, but I know my motivation is on top and that my energy levels are high so I’m hoping for a great week! 

Hope you all have had a great Christmas! 

I need some tips from you for our next ”blog tournament”, please. Our last one, ”trick shots” went well and hope you guys liked it. I had some ideas about a new one but maybe you guys have some better ones now?! The winners will recieve some cool prices. What prices would you guys like? 

Get back to me if you have some ideas and all the best!

Alex

Have a lot of new stuff to think about this year with the new ”groove change”. Playing the new wedges will be the most dramatic change from last year. The irons will be different as well, but only when hitting from the rough. I tried them from fariway grass in Dubai and they felt about the same. Dubai doesn’t have much rough so couldn’t have a go from there but I’m sure they wil have some rough at Royal Trophy. 

Anyway, on the left is the new driver FTiz. A little more triangular shape to it and it goes about 5-10 yards further because the clubhead spead goes up. I love the old head though so we’ll see if I change right away. It goes fairly straight as well and I know where the misses are.

Old on the right and new on the left. ”V” stands for V-grooves and will spin less. ”MD” on the right stands for Mac Daddy, which is a name Phil Mickelson gave the grooves because they spun like crazy. No more of that:( I love the spin, but I guess this is a challenge to invent some new shots.

Here are the new grooves on the left. You can see that they are thinner and more of them as well. Callaway also added a small one on the bottom to add some grip. I just heard that we don’t have to use the new grooves in the Royal Trophy but I think I’ll play them anyway to get used to them before the desert swing in the Middle East.

If I took the led tape off the new club they would almost look the same. I kept the same bounce and sole on them.

The difference in the irons is the same as in the wedges. There are more and thinner grooves in the new clubs. 

I used to have my grips turned to the right as you can see on the right club. The reminder (the little ridge on the back of the grip) then moves left and fits perfect in the strong left hand grip and it feels like I can hit a nice straight- or fade shot from there, without flipping the club over. I went away from this grip a year and a half ago and I have no idea why I did that. I have to go back to the club repair shop to get it done again because I think it will help my swing a lot. 

The new ball (iz) spins more and goes further. I love the way technology goes! 

Off to the club repair shop now to get it all fixed before heading out to Thailand. I want it all done before leaving so I can start practicing right away when I get down there. 

Back soon.

I like Christmas but seriously, what’s the reason for all the snow and the cold:) It’s fun hitting balls indoors for a while but I am, to say the least, a little frustrated now. Yesterday, I brought a golf club out while taking a walk, and today I am, along with Kotte, a little pissed that neither the indoor golf center nor the gym is open. Just beacuse it’s Christmas!? Come on. The whole Christmas thing starts at 3 P.M. Before that there is loads of time. Especially when someone else takes care of all the Christmas preparations…Thanks Mom!

Although, I love golf I find other sports amazing too. Skiing for example. Seeing all the snow outside now makes it even harder to not go up to the mountains and try the skiis again. I’m not particularly good at it but it’s such a nice feeling to hit the slopes. Got even more motivated when I watched the 2008 World Champion Henrik Windstedt’s new ski film ”Exploded View”. It’s an amazing documentary film about his life as a freeskier and the film maker Fred Arne Wergeland made the film look extraordinary. I remember making a short commercial film for Peak Performance last year with Fred Arne and at first I thought he was a bit crazy trying to get the right angles and such but the film looked cool when it was all done.  Here is the trailer for ”Exploded View”:

Hope you all are having a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! But let’s make it fast so we can play golf again…

Alex