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By Trevor Immelman
Special to PGA TOUR.com

Editor's note: Trevor Immelman, the 2006 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, has continued his strong play this year with two third-place finishes in five starts -- including at last week's World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship. This is the second installment of his blog.

Trevor Immelman says he's a big fan of desert golf. (WireImage)

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ORLANDO, Fla. -- I thought I'd take a little time to write this before I headed out to Lead's place to hit a few balls. It was great for me to find some form last week in Arizona. After I finished third at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, my game sort of tailed off a little bit. It was quite disappointing. I tried to grind through it, and after I missed the cut at the FBR Open, I spent some quality time working on my short game. I went to the Nissan Open with high hopes of playing well, and while the tie for 44th wasn't exactly what I was looking for, I could see things were improving.

Once I got to Tucson, I enjoyed the golf course straightaway. I've always liked desert golf. The golf course was fairly generous off the tee and with the wind direction and altitude, it didn't play all that long. Whoever set up the course decided on some tricky pin placements so that suited my game. You had to be sharp with your irons, and I could tell I was finding my form as the week went on. It's always nice when you put work into your game and you can see it paying off.

If you look at the stats, which we spend lot of time doing, the short game is usually what's holding you back from shooting low scores. To do well in big tournaments like the majors and THE PLAYERS, your short game has to be really good. The golf courses are so difficult, there's no way you're going to hit 16, 17, 18 greens in regulation. So for me to compete against the best players in big tournaments, I have to continue to work on my game from 100 yards and in. You have to make sure you get down in two from that distance as often as possible. I really put a lot of emphasis on my putting. That's definitely the most important part of the short game. You can hit a great wedge shot to 6 or 7 feet, but that's useless unless you make the putt.

When I played Justin Rose in the quarterfinals, I started feeling like everything was coming together nicely. I didn't miss any greens, and I made six birdies to win 5 and 4. Unfortunately, I lost to Henrik Stenson, the eventual winner, in the afternoon. But that was one of those situations where I felt like he just played better. I was able to come back on Sunday and win my third-place match, though, so I left on a positive note.

I am really looking forward to the Florida swing. I gained a world of confidence last week. I really enjoyed the format. It was a nice change to play against one person and channel your energy into that match rather than a tournament over 72 holes and against a whole field. Every round felt like the final day of a tournament. Sometimes down the stretch when you're trying to win a regular tournament, you get the same feeling in your stomach that you do in match play. But last week was fun.

And it was good to see the younger players do well. Henrik and I played a lot of amateur events together like the Eisenhower Trophy. We both played the Challenge Tour and we were rookies on the European Tour the same year. He was always a solid, powerful player, and for the last two or three years, he's been one of the best in the world. Geoff Ogilvy is about the same age, and obviously he already has won a major. Living here in Orlando at Lake Nona, I can see that Justin has put a lot of work into his game, and Charles Howell III is one of the best players on TOUR right now. So it was nice to see the young guys pull through. I am still of the opinion that we need to give ourselves time -- and the golf community needs to give us time -- to experience more things; to win tournaments, and to lose them, so that we can become more familiar with the process. After all, there aren't many players who have experienced the meteoric rise of a player like Tiger or Sergio.

People have asked whether winning a major is the next step for me. Obviously, that would be the ultimate. It's what I have set out to so since I was a young kid. It's pretty much the dream. But I think winning on TOUR in general is my next step. I want to get a few more victories under my belt, and hopefully a major will creep in there. Obviously, the Masters is high on my list. I have played in four now, and I tied for fifth in 2005. That's a situation where, like I was saying, the younger you are, the tougher it becomes. That's definitely a course where local knowledge helps. If you've played Augusta National a lot you know what to expect. You pretty much know where the pins are going to be. But I feel like it's a course that suits my game so I'm looking forward to it.

I took the redeye and got back to Orlando early Monday morning. I spent most of the day relaxing, but I worked out a little in the afternoon trying to get my body back in shape. I shot a commercial for one of my sponsors, Old Mutual, an international financial services company, on Wednesday. It took about seven hours, but it was fun. It's up to you guys to decide whether I'm good or not. I really enjoyed shooting that PGA TOUR PSA with Vijay and I've done the odd thing with Nike, although on a smaller scale. I'm the only person in this one, though, so hopefully, it comes out well. The commercial will start airing during the Tavistock Cup. It has a funny twist to it that we can build on in future commercials.

It was great to get back to my wife and family. Jacob is 7 months old now, and he's really growing. It's amazing to see how much more coordinated he is, even in just two weeks. He's clapping his hands together and doing a bunch of different things. He thinks he's talking but he's not really making any sense yet. He shouts back at you and then gets this puzzled look like he wonders why you can't understand what he's saying. The next hurdle will be crawling. And yes, he does have golf clubs, but he hasn't quite figured them out. We're not going to force him to play. We want him to decide exactly what he wants to do. The most important thing is for him to have fun.

The PODS Championship next week starts a stretch of three straight for me along with the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which will be nice because I can stay at home, and Doral. Then we've got the Tavistock Cup the week before the Masters. That's definitely high on our list because we don't want Isleworth to win again. We've recruited a few more players to help -- Chris DiMarco; Justin; Henrik, whose house is about to be finished; myself, Ernie and Goose. Unfortunately Sergio can't play this year, but we're looking forward to it, and we definitely want to win. I'll let you know what happens next time when I write.