PGA Championship

Another week and another cut made! This was a very tough one and we got to see some extremely high scores from very good players. The wind was howling and the rain pouring, and together with tough pin positions set by Peter Hanson on firm and fast greens, it was a true test of perseverance. I felt like I was handling it pretty well the first day and I was close to a pretty good round. The second day the wind had doubled, the pins were tucked in behind bunkers, and I didn’t have as many opportunities as the day before. Despite the challenges, I made the cut and was still in a good position to make it into the top10 with a solid last round. I started on the back 9 which begin with 3 par 3’s the first 5 holes, and as I had a difficulty to hit the greens in the extreme wind (used a 5iron from 143 yards where I usually hit 185…), it made it extremely tough to score considering the positions I put myself in. I dropped down quite far on the results board and finished T43rd.

My takeaways from this week is to practice some more mixed shots on the range when doing target practice and work on some putting in downhill lies. This course displayed it very clearly with one hole in to the wind and the next one with the wind, and it would be beneficial to go from hitting a high shot to a knock down and practice the different ball flights a little bit more. As the greens were quicker than most, I found myself putting past the hole 2-3 ft and thereby often missing the putts high. I also missed a few shorter putts (5-7 ft) that were downhill breakers. I will practice some ball start on downhill lies which should help even for faster greens when I have to adjust the speed.

Now I have two weeks off from tournaments where I will get some good practice done, workout, and do some clinics with different firms. Next tournament is in Denmark in mid-June.