Week of the tour...
 
To become the best player in the club or on the tour it sometimes take adjustments and changes in the routine to get it to perform.

I want to share my experiences that are worth mentioning.
 
During my first year as a professional I got an invitation to play my first tournament on the japanease tour. To be able to travel to a new culture, new people and golfcourses that are basically holy was an incredible experience. There was almost as much money on the japanease tour as there was on the US tour and all tournaments with national TV coverage.
 
In Japan there aren't many places to build courses on so they build them in the mountains. Even some mountainpeaks have been clipped to make way for green fairways. You may think that it sounds expensive to build courses in these manners, and it it. And it shows on the membersfees. To many japanease people is plainly hitting golfballs into a net on the drvingrange. They know that they'll never afford to join a club and getting a teetime anywhere can take up to a whole year. To my great suprise golf was just not a sport but a weekendexperience. The japanease golfer meet up in the morning, warm up and grabs a bite to eat before the first tee-off. After 9 holes you take a break and get a new tee time for the final 9 holes.
 
Although I got the opportunity to go over there a few weeks before the tournaments would begin and was hoping to play a bunch of rounds before the tournaments. That wasn't the case. It was hard getting tee times and I was constantly dependant on my sponsop for transportation. I didn't understand a word of japanease and the japanease didn't understand much of my english.
 
When i finally got out on the play-in rounds before the first tournament a few days before the cultural chock was greater than ever. The bags where placed on rails on the first hole and female caddies walked around with remote controls where the bags traveled outside the fairwayfringe from hole to hole. You often found yourself using signlanguage to make yourself understood on what club you wanted. Sometimes you had to ride a lift from the green the next tee.
 
It was like riding a train from one mountain to the next. Missunderstand me correctly, they where good courses but in a way one wasn't used to. If you then where to remove all the red and yellow sticks and paint them white it gets even more japanease. The fairway didn't get any wider by having out-of-bounds on both sides of the fairway.
 
It was a challenge even before you got on the tee the first day. Sponsors where stretching out drivers to play with and promised small fortunes if I won while using their equipment. Wear their clothes and I could get big contracts as a blonde swede. It was hard to turn down all these offers. When I was later drawn to play with the Ozaki brothers and Brandel Chamblee who had won on the US tour a few times and made this tournament very interesting. It got both nervous and fun at the same time.

If ever this was the place to adjust to the current conditions you wheren't used to. I learned quickly why all the players asked their caddies how the ball rolled on the green. The grass they used in called Korai and is a sharper straw that can trick the eye more than the bermuda grass in Florida does. The green could tilt to one side and roll to another.
 
On courses like this I had to make the decision to focus on keepig the ball in play right from the start. It was a matter of cenceling out all the out-of-bounds markers that outline the edge of the cliff and instead focus on small targets on the fairway. You had to drink alot of fluids so as not to lose your concentration. You also had to make sure to always get uphill putts so as not to be fooled by the Korai grass. You really had to listen closely to the caddies tips cause they where right 99% of the time.
 
To finish this tournament by making the cut, playing 36 holes with Brandel Chamblee and beating him with 1 stroke by making a birdie on the last hole on live TV was an amazing experience.
 
Life on the tour is like heaven and hell. When the game is working there nothing better and when it doesn't for a few weeks alot of people can't wait to go home. But there are a few precious moments that captivates our hearts in this magnificent game and makes it a challenge every time we "peg up"...
 
GOOD LUCK!
Thomas Svanstedt