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Editor's note: Carl Pettersson won the 2006 Memorial Tournament, which was his second PGA TOUR victory in as many years. The 29-year-old Swede is one of several players writing monthly blogs for PGATOUR.com this year, and here is his first installment.

KAPALUA, Hawaii -- It's nice to come back here to Maui. This is my second straight time, and when you get to start the season at the Mercedes-Benz Championship, that means you've had a good year the year before. My wife and daughter and I came over a little early on Dec. 28. My wife's parents are with us, too. So I got to practice a little bit and I played a few rounds. But I still found time to hang out at the pool a little bit and relax. We went out on a whale cruise one day, too, and we saw four or five different ones. You can see them from here at the course when they spout up out in the bay, but we were a lot closer out in the boat. It was really cool.

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I'm pretty well rested. I took three weeks completely off right after THE TOUR Championship. Then I practiced at home in North Carolina before the World Golf Championships-Barbados World Cup in December. I played pretty well there. We had a chance to win but we couldn't quite get the job done. Once that was done, I took it relatively easy and enjoyed the holidays with my family. My daughter Carlie is just over 2 years old so this was the first Christmas she really had an idea what was happening. She really got into opening presents. It was fun to watch her. Plus, we just found out we have another little one on the way, probably in the beginning of August. So next year will be a really good Christmas for us.

It was nice to get the game going for this year, and I'm playing all right. I played pretty good Thursday. I didn't play as well on Friday, but it's tricky when the wind is blowing as hard as it is this week. So we'll see. Someone asked me if it's hard to get back into competition mode when you're playing at a place as beautiful as Kapalua. It's actually not that hard, though. We're all professionals. We know what to do. This wind and the rain we had Friday can kick you the first week back, though. But I feel like I'm playing okay, and I'm looking forward to the year. I never set that many goals for myself of anything. I just want to win and see if I can come back here next year. If I win, everything will take care of itself.