G'Day everyone,

I'm writing to you from Pattaya, Thailand after traveling up here yesterday from Australia.

As usual it was a nice two weeks playing at home. Its always nice to start at home, although it's busier for me than any other time of the year, I feel it's a nice way to start the year.  I have a lot of family and friends at both events, so it's great to have their support as I start another season.

As far as my play the first two weeks, I would have to say that considering the way I felt about certain parts of my game, my results (T-7 at Aus Open and T-9 at ANZ Masters) were pretty acceptable.

The Handa Australian Open was my first week of the year and we played at Commonwealth Golf Club in the heart of the great Sandbelt region in Melbourne, Victoria. Commonwealth is one of a great group of courses that make up the Sandbelt.  I would have to say that I don't think there is an area of land anywhere else around the world that could boast that they have 6 or 7 of the best and most unique courses in the world. Commonwealth is one in that group. It's a challenging way to start the year but a course that will sharpen you game and concentration very quickly.

There was plenty of rust in my game that week. I had a few issues I needed to address in my swing. Just stuff that after practicing most of January by myself I had developed a couple of old bad habits. So considering I was dealing with that to finish T-7 wasn't too bad. I was quite happy with my putting that week...so a pat on the back for that! :)

During that week, my family (with the exception of my parents who were in Melbourne with me) battled through massive cyclone Yasi!  It was the biggest cyclone ever to hit the Queensland east coast. We were fortunate enough that the cyclone did no major damage to any of our houses and all my family were safe. Amazingly there was only one fatality during the whole cyclone but it did hit close to home. The young man who died was my Mum's best friend's nephew. So my thoughts and sympathies go out to her family.  Also my thought go out to all the Queenslanders who have been affected by the record floods and cyclone Yasi!  Queenslanders are a tough breed of people and it has been great to see everyone sticking together and getting in helping people who have been affected.

Last week, we played at Royal Pines on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Royal Pines is a place were I have many great memories and experiences. I was defending champion last week and was asked at my pre-tournament press conference why I have had so much success there? I'm really not sure why but the confidence I do have when I play there, I wish I could bottle up and take it on the road with me.

Again I battled a few of the swing issues that I had the week before.  Although things did progressively get better I still wasn't completely happy with how I swung it.  Managing to shoot 16 under was a good accomplishment considering.  Again my putting was quite solid and helped me to a T-9 finish.
 
We had a fun time last week!  On the Saturday night, my sister Katie, her husband and a few good friends and I went to watch the All Stars and Indigenous All Stars Rugby League game.  It's the second running of the event and is the kick off game to the start of the NRL season. I was able to get some tickets from Wendell Sailor who was one of the coaches for the Indigenous side.  He got us some great tickets and it was a fun game to watch with some of the games current greats playing.

So that's about it for the last two weeks.  As I'm finishing up this blog our practice round had been completely rained out so I will do a lot of work tomorrow during pro-am day to get ready to start Thursday.

The putter is feeling good, so just get the swing fired up and I'm hoping for a good couple weeks in Asia!

Take care,
Karrie