Peru and Ecuador Trip

My first guaranteed starts of the season on PGA Tour Latin America came in Lima, Peru and Quito, Ecuador. These were the first two events of the back half of the season. I arrived in Lima for the Diners Club Peru Open on Sunday the 23rd and began my week of prep leading up to the start of the event. The hotel I stayed at was across the street from the golf course and was affiliated with the club. One of the best parts about Peru was the food, the entire week the food was incredible, lots of fish and good eats. Each day there were lots of locals that came out to watch the event, it truly was a fantastic experience and one of my favorite events of the year. The one problem was, I played absolutely terribly. After putting in a great couple days of work with my caddie I felt very prepared to attack the course and play well. Unfortunately bad golf happens and it makes you have to look in the mirror and figure out yourself what went wrong by being brutally honest. Very simply, I did not hit the fairways off the tee which resulted in very difficult shots into the greens from the rough which consistently had "flier" lies. Ended up making lots of bogeys and high scores.

After learning from my mistakes and wiping the slate clean, I arrived in Quito, Ecuador. My first time being at extreme elevation (9,000 ft above sea level) proved to be very difficult to adjust to, altitude sickness plagued my friends and it was difficult to walk the golf course without having to catch your breath. But, I adjusted nicely and was able to play much better golf than in Lima. The views were stunning with lots of volcanoes and mountains as far as the eye can see. My friends and I went to the Equator and to Telefrico which I have attached in pictures on my Photo Gallery page. I played solid the first two days and made the cut at the tournament on the number shooting -3, but on the weekend with multiple great opportunities, I ultimately couldn't get much going and finished at Even par for the event. Looking at the positives I did very well with determining my numbers, but when I hit the green I couldn't make anything.

The beauty of golf is that you'll never be too good and there is always room for improvement and I realized that even with how well I had been hitting the ball, I needed to be better on and around the greens with my short game. So it was time to make some drastic changes. When I arrived back to the US, I didn't feel comfortable with any of the putters I owned, so I went and had a fitting done which resulted in buying a brand new putter and developing lots of confidence it my ability to hit great putts.

On to Colombia!