Mike Report Day Two at the British Open

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:01:21

"TROON, Scotland - Through two days at Royal Troon, I have a 71 and now a 68 today and I feel pretty good about not having found much trouble out there. It tells me I'm controlling my ball well. I'm not hitting any wild shots. I hit a couple off line but you're going to do that and I've been able to scramble well. It does feel a little less stressful when you play like that. I'm not scrambling for pars on a lot of holes. I have a lot of birdie putts out there. If I can warm the putter up more I'll be in good shape.

I got a couple more putts to drop today and that's really the only big difference in my game from the first day. The weather, though, was a little different today. Plenty more wind. When I woke up at 4:30 this morning it was blowing hard and it's just continued all day. It's a tough wind for me going out, a right-to-left wind, so I have to hit a lot of little draws against the wind on the front side. Coming back, it's a left-to-right wind and it sets up a little better for me.

At this British Open, I can finally feel some of my preparation and experience coming into my game. I think what I've learned is to play shots over here. I think in the past I've worked on my swing while I was here and that if I hit an eight-iron 155 yards, that's what I tried to hit.

I noticed today I was hitting five-iron where my playing partners were hitting eight-irons in some places. I was playing shots and keeping the ball down and using my imagination a little bit more than what I did four or five years ago. And I think that's very important here when the ground is very firm in links golf. And another big thing is that I've been coming over early and playing golf, getting used to playing golf on links courses. Then when the tournament starts, I don't feel like I'm going from U.S. golf to right here.

For sure I'm playing more by feel. I even find myself eyeballing a lot of yardages out here this week. I have a little game with Brennan that when I get to my ball, I kind of try to tell him the yardage by my eye before he tells me what it is and that is really helping me to kind of fine-tune my feel.

I had a nice little stretch today on the front nine with three birdies in a row and it started after I missed a very makeable putt on the fourth hole for birdie. But I got a six-iron to three feet on the next hole and made it, then wedged it to four feet and made a birdie on the next hole, the par-5. At the 7th, I wedged it up to 15 feet and made that one, too and I just continued to be solid all the way around to the finish.

The difference on my round today, though, was just a couple of putts. Yesterday, I didn't make anything, really. And today, I seemed to sneak a couple of balls closer to the hole. I've got lots of time now this afternoon to relax. I think I'll be doing a little bit of practising but I won't hit a lot of balls and I'll just work on my short game. I'll fine-tune my putting a little bit more for sure.

We went down to Safeway and bought a bunch of DVDs last night to pass the time, so we'll watch some of those and maybe read a book and relax.

I'm really looking forward to the weekend.

Thanks for all your support.
Mike
"