First Professional Victory! - Honda Classic Pre Q - Historic Melreese CC

This last week was an extremely busy one. I played in 3 separate events, 1 in the Miami area and 2 in the West Palm Beach area. I started the week in Miami on Monday and Tuesday playing at International Links of Melreese Country Club on the MLGT. The conditions were tough with high winds and tricky greens and I did not play my best golf. It was also a sad couple days because the course is to be closed for good on March 19th after 62 years and this was the last event ever played at Melreese. I shot 73/74 (+5) with 3 doubles and some poor up and down misses resulting in bogeys. All in all I felt like I was playing very good golf, especially flighting the golf ball in the wind, just needed to clean up the mistakes.

On Wednesday I played in Lake Worth at Fountains Country Club West for another one day event on the MLGT. Conditions were again tough as it is always windy in South Florida, but I knew my game could stand up to the test. After having a fairly slow start to the day playing a lot of the first 6 holes directly into the wind making 6 pars, I finally made my first birdie on hole 7. I continued to have good up an down saves and narrow birdie misses until it all began to change on the last 7 holes. I ended up hitting some fantastic short iron and wedge shots that led to me birdieing 4 of my last 7 holes to shoot -5, 66 bogey free. All day I stayed very patient and let the course come to me. I did a great job of not overpowering the course, not fighting the wind, and not getting upset over missed putts. I just played great consistent golf. At the end of the day it ended up being enough for a 1 shot victory in a very good field of 95 players. Below is the write up from the Tour and pictures of my scorecard and win.

I was right back at it Thursday morning playing in the Honda Classic Pre Qualifier at Wellington National in Wellington, Florida. It is a course I have played well on in the past so I had high expectations going into the day, especially after winning the day before. After having a slow start with a bad par 5 bogey, I rallied to make 3 straight birdies and was -2 thru 8 holes. I ended up having some more poor bogeys in the middle part of the round, but made 2 more birdies to get back to -2 thru 15. I knew I needed a couple more birdies in my last three holes to make the cut, but I made some bad swings under pressure which led to bad poorly timed bogeys and I finished the round shooting even par 72. Story of the day was simply making to many unforced errors leading to silly bogeys and in a one day qualifier that will not get the job done.

I have another busy tournament schedule coming up this week. My golf game feels great and with some structured practice on certain areas this weekend, I know there will be many more wins and great finishes in the future!