First up, the Australian Open....Royal Melbourne! What a great experience to be able to play a women's professional tournament on the Composite Course.....never happened before this year. So I was excited to get started. It was a busy week for me...even more so than usual. I think because it was an LPGA event for the first time and the first time the LPGA had played an event in Australia for 12 years. The week started with a great honor for me. Royal Melbourne invited me to be an Honorary Member. The only other people who are Honorary Members at Royal Melbourne are Peter Thompson, Kel Nagle, Greg Norman and Bruce Green. They had a dinner for me which was a great night and the membership all made me feel very welcome.

So as the week went on, I tried to learn as much as I could about Royal Melbourne. Its such a fantastic design, as it plays tough but fair. The greens are the defense of the course and I think I could play there 10 times and still have a lot to learn on how to putt them. The weather is also a major factor in how the course plays. The weather for the week was cool and pretty breezy which was a challenge. All in all, I think for my first tournament of the year, it was always going to be a tough challenge for me to play well. I made a couple of swing changes that are still a work in progress and the first tournament of the year you just never know what your going to get. I loved the experience of playing Royal Melbourne though and I hope I get to play a tournament there again in the future.

The next week was off to Thailand where as usual it was very hot and humid....more to my liking after spending the off season at home in the North Queensland. I really like going to Thailand....love the people and really love the food. Although this year I think I ate or drank something that didn't agree with me. I paid for it that week and think I'm still somewhat experiencing some side affects! So while battling a bad belly I was pleasantly surprised to be at the top of the leaderboard after 2 rounds. My swing had made a nice improvement from the first week and I was making some putts. A highlight came at the 12th hole on Friday when I hit a 6 iron in the hole for an ace! It had a been a couple of years since I'd had one so it was great to see a good swing be rewarded! The final 2 rounds didn't go as well as I would have liked although I was hanging in there and only 3 behind after 6 holes on Sunday. A big score on the 7th derailed any chance of winning and it was hard to get back on track after that. I was still happy though with the progress I had made and looked forward to Singapore.

I was defending champion in Singapore and was excited to get back to the course I had won at last year. It was a busy beginning to the week with some extra commitments as defending champion. HSBC really run a world class event and do a lot of great work to gain extra media attention. The press conference at the Botanical Gardens and the pro-am party where some of the girls modeled $10 million worth of Tiffany's jewelry create a good buzz going into the event. My practice went well for the week and I was feeling even better about my game. I got off to a terrible start on Thursday, being 4 over after 7. I made a good comeback to shoot even par but I just never got anything going for the week. I have spent so much time on the range this off season and now feel like I'm getting somewhere with the positions I need to feel but just didn't take it onto the course. It may take awhile for it to come completely naturally on the course but I know I'm headed in the right direction.

Sunday night after we finished in Singapore I got on a very long flight back to Florida! It was great to get back to my home in Florida as I hadn't been there in nearly 3 months. I had a good 2 weeks off but it did go quickly and now here I am on plane headed back out on the road. I did get one day out on my boat but the weather wasn't great and it was really windy so no fishing was done. Hopefully it will be better when I'm back there in April.

I am looking forward to the next 3 weeks out west. Its a good swing with the RR Donnelley Founders Cup in Phoenix, the Kia Classic in Carlsbad, CA and finally our first major of the year, the Kraft Nabisco in Rancho Mirage, CA.

I'm defending champion at the Founders Cup, so I'm looking forward to that. My practice went well over the 2 weeks off so its just a matter of getting some trust on the course. So hopefully it will be the start of a big 3 weeks!

Let's see how it goes!

Karrie