Player Blog: No off-season for Immelman  Editor's note: Trevor Immelman, who is coming off a tie for second at the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship, will be doing a monthly blog for PGATOUR.com this year. The 26-year-old South African is in Honolulu this week for the Sony Open in Hawaii and this is his first installment. HONOLULU, Hawaii -- Obviously, anytime you come to a tournament like the Mercedes-Benz Championship that has so many great players to finish well is exciting and good for your confidence. It was a little disappointing, too, though, because I felt like I played well enough to maybe go a little bit better but my putting let me down a little. But for the first week of the year, though, I felt like it was a pretty good start for me and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens here at Waialae. 
To get in a winner's only event like the one at Kapalua is a fantastic achievement. I think it's a golf course that suits my game so I'd like to keep going back there and having a go at it. There's definitely some local knowledge to be gained on some of the tee shots with some of the lines you have to take. The fairways are so wide that there are definitely areas you can take advantage of if you know where you are going. So I felt like I figured a few things out so I just need to keep winning so I can go back there and test what I learned. Plus, Hawaii is a wonderful place to start the season. We had Jake with us so we were kind of limited as to what we could do with a baby that small. But we went to a bunch of nice restaurants and had a look around. We drove down to Lahaina and had a great time there, too. So I'd love to go back to Maui, and it would mean I had a good season the previous year. So it's a win-win situation, as far as I can see. It's been quite a whirlwind of late for me, though. I had basically no off-season -- just 10 days. So it wasn't great. We left Capetown on Dec. 27 and flew back to our house in Orlando. That was a 20-hour flight and then it probably took 12 hours in the air to get from Orlando to Hawaii. So that was quite a lot of traveling. I have a week off, possibly two, after this one, and I'm really looking forward to it. I have a great team down there that helps me work on my fitness so I'll hook up with those guys and assess where I am and how we're going to continue to improve. If I do play San Diego, I'll probably start hitting a few balls on the weekend. But if I don't, I might go eight or nine days, maybe even longer, without touching a club. I think I'll make a decision on whether I'll play once I get home and see how I feel. I'll ask the advice of some people and just decide what is best for me to be peaking at the tournaments I want to be peaking at. That's what's going to make my mind up for me -- how I'm going to be ready for the right events. Someone asked me how I keep going with a schedule like I had over the last few months. Well, these are all tournaments I want to play and I've looked forward to playing, so I think mentally that's the thing. That's what keeps you going. I definitely feel that from a physical point of view at some point I'm going to need to take some time off. You don't want to get to the start of the majors and start feeling that you are running out of energy. I don't think that I will, but I don't want to get to a situation where I keep pushing and pushing and pushing and then get injured. I don't think that's worth it. So I want to make sure I pace myself. I feel like I have a long career ahead of me. |
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