Aloha, LPGA.

Good morning, everyone!  I know I haven’t played a tournament since my last post, but there has been so much going on I thought I should take this opportunity to catch everyone up.  By opportunity, I am referring to my 3 hour layover at DFW.  However, I won’t be complaining about travel today because in about 14 hours I will be in Hawaii! I have finally gained entry into my first LPGA event of the season, the LOTTE Championship, and it just so happens to be in Oahu, Hawaii.  As I tried to explain in my “Category 17” blog after Q-school finished this past December, I will gain entry into events when enough girls ranked ahead of me decide not to play.  Explaining “conditional status” has become about as easy as explaining how the stars align, so I’m not going to go there again, but nonetheless, I am in the field next week.  With the first major of the year finishing up last week, a lot of the top girls on the LPGA want some time off and especially don’t want to travel all the way to Hawaii for just one week.  This allows for many of the girls with only conditional status to play in the field.   

Prior to me finding out I would play in Hawaii, I had booked a flight home to Sioux Falls for a few days. As I noted in my last blog, my game has been testing my patience and wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be. I decided that if I didn’t go home during this break, I wouldn’t be home to see my family or my coach until June.  I flew home Sunday, took some really good weather with me, and was back in Orlando by Thursday afternoon.  I put in three good days of practice that included some minor swing changes and some fine tuning on my short game.  I think a lot of people assume that professionals never have any swing problems, but we in fact develop bad habits just like anyone else.  It is amazing how many times I can go to a lesson and find myself working on a problem that I thought I had fixed two months ago.  Besides some good time at the course, I was able to see a few friends and my family as well.  Taking a break and just hanging out with friends and family when I have the chance is something I want to focus on more this year; it creates the balance in my life that I think will help me be successful.  

Once I touched down in Orlando the “relaxing” was over and it was full speed ahead to get everything ready for Hawaii.  I played 18 holes Friday morning, then spent about three hours moving all my stuff from my apartment into storage for the summer, and finally finished packing for Hawaii by about 9:00 last night.  I was up at 3:00 am this morning to leave for the airport at 3:30.  While I am more than excited to be headed to Hawaii to play in the LPGA event this week, there is just a lot of work and planning that goes into getting a last minute trip planned like this (I booked my flight on Tuesday!), on top of moving out and finding enough time to continue to practice every day.  Thankfully I have a great agent that helps me out and takes my stress level from 10 to 1 pretty quickly. OK, maybe its not at 1, but somewhere around 3 maybe? 🙂 

Ok! Time to board my flight to Maui!  If you want to follow along this week the event starts on Wednesday with a Saturday finish.  This allows us to get back home Sunday night if we take a red-eye out of Hawaii Saturday night.  As always, all LPGA events are broadcast on the Golf Channel.  If I am playing well there is a good chance you might see me hit a shot or two, if I’m not playing well, don’t worry, I will be thinking of other ways to get on TV. 

 

Wish me luck!

KK