Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2012!  I hope you all had a great Holiday season and are enjoying the beginning of the year.

I am currently in Australia and have been since just before Christmas. It has been really great to be home and to be home for a big chunk of time. I have been enjoying a lot of time with my family.  I have 3 nieces and a nephew that have been keeping me very busy.  They are all under the age of 6 so they really have me running around after them.  I know when I leave in a couple of weeks, I will miss them very much!!

I had a little bit of break at the end of the season, not doing a whole lot of practice until the beginning of January.  I have really started pumping up the practice time and getting ready to play my first event of the year, the Australian Open in Melbourne.  It's being played at Royal Melbourne which I can't wait for.  I last played Royal way back when I was still an amateur.  I've played both courses there but never the composite course which is great that they are hosting us on that.

As far as my practice is going, I started making a couple of swing changes late last year and am still working hard to finish them off.  I had really gotten into some bad habits with my swing and it all finally caught up to me in about August.  It was definitely stuff that needed to be done but its never easy so I am hoping that things will be in tip top shape for the first week of the season.  If it's not quite there at that time I know that if I stay patient I think the changes will be there at some point and I will be able to play more consistently well.

Another very interesting thing that I have been doing is being involved with Peter Thomson and Ross Perrett and their design team. They approached me late last year and asked if I was interested in being a part of their team to help them with their bid to design the Olympic course in 2016. I, of course, jumped at the chance and met with them down in Melbourne.  It was a great just to get the opportunity to work alongside Peter Thomson, who arguably is the most successful Australian golfer, what is an amazing experience!  We are down to being 1 of the final 8 design teams in the running. Peter and Ross are flying to Rio in the next day or so to present our course design bid.  I am very thankful for the opportunity and fingers crossed we win. That would be awesome!!

Ok...well that about all I've got for now. I will update you again with how things are going.

Take care,
Karrie