andrew scott jensen

I hope this blog finds you well.  I am back in Vancouver for a two week break before heading to Victoria to start 6 consecutive weeks of tournaments.  Needless to say, I am very excited to start playing events in Canada.  I have never appreciated my home country as much as I do know after being away from it for so many months.

As my previous blogs have shown, I am not exactly where I expected to be after the California and Mexico swings.  I am very disappointed in my performance under pressure, and am struggling to maintain my confidence.

I have had some good talks with the people that I can trust the most about my game, career and life.  The encouraging words are pouring in, and it really helps.  I do feel a turn around in my mentality heading into Victoria.  The consensus of what people are telling me is to stop over-thinking everything and just believe in myself and trust what got me to this level.  This is really helpful.

My coach has assigned me my homework for this break and it was a little bit shocking but perfect at the same time.  I need to read the books that helped me free up my game to achieve the success of last year, and to keep my chin up!

My personal assessment of the recent failures is due in large part to poor goal setting.  Serious goal setting is something I practice for all areas of my life: personal, spiritual, professional, financial, etc..  I lost the plot this year so far.  All the goals I have set have been golf related and thats it.  Doing this tricked my sub conscious to believing that all my worth as a person was golf related.

Clearly, there has been many failures on the course so far this year.  My poor goal setting forced me to thinking that I was a failure because of all my golfing failures.  In spite of the poor play on course, my life has been great.  I have seen and done so many great things in the past 5 months.  I need to slow down and re-gain my perspective of this whole thing in order to start playing good golf again.

I will use this time off to re-assess the year and stick to the original goals set in the fall for my first year on tour.  I think that sticking to these goals will sharpen my focus and also soften the blow of a bad round or a bad tournament. I will also re-assess my personal goals.  Doing this will help me see that I am not a failure and that I have done things of worth outside of my poor play on the course.

I need to stay positive if I want to succeed out here!

So, I missed yet another cut this week.  After sitting in 19th place following round 1 I let it slip away in the second.  I made 4 bogeys in 5 holes mid way through my round and started thinking about the cut, and everything just went downhill when I lost my focus.  I made bogey after bogey then a double and a quad and shot 48 on my back nine to miss the cut by 10 strokes.

I have a lot of re-assessing to do when I get home to Vancouver tonight.  I will write more about what has been going wrong when I sit in a couple of airports today.

I played pretty well in very hard conditions yesterday.  I started with 2 doubles in my first 6 holes, but battled back to a +2 74 that left me in T19 place after the first round.

I plan to do the same thing today but just eliminate the doubles.

stay up to date on the scores at cantour.com

I’m in San Luis Potosi, Mexico this week and so far it is a great place.  The hotel has a world class olympic training facility that we have access to.  The golf course is a Jack Nicklaus design and it is really solid.  The clubhouse looks more like a museum both inside and out than a golf clubhouse.

I am totally surprised, I feel like I’m in Palm Springs this week and not Mexico.

I had a good practice round today where I actually hit golf shots that resemble those of a professional golfer.
This round boosted my fleeting confidence a little bit, and hopefully I can do something positive on Thursday and really boost the confidence.

Last week was a tough week with a lot of doubts passing through my head over the weekend.  I did get sick on Saturday, so spending the entire day alone in my room gave me lots of time to go through a mental and emotional roller coaster.

I am in a low place right now, I am doubting a lot of things and it really isn’t fun to be like this.  I think the key to get out of this is to think about ‘me’ and do what it takes to make me better.  I don’t like being selfish like this, but sometimes you need to look out for yourself first.

I have had trouble lately thinking about everything and everybody else other than myself.  I am worrying about how my bad play will affect the world around me and not focusing on how it affects me and how to deal with it.

I really have no expectations this week.  I can’t confidently say that I am over this slump or that I feel good about this week.  I am just taking each day as it comes and doing my best to work my way through this time.

Ultimately, I just have to believe in myself and remember why I am playing golf.  This is the attitude that got me through Q School so easily, so hopefully I can tap into it again and put together some good rounds of golf.

…easier said than done; I know, but I will continue to work my tail of to get back to that place.

I’ll let you know how the first two rounds went on Saturday

This week in Cancun has been a very rough time.  I played awful shooting 82-77.  These two rounds have put me in a hard spot mentally.  I will have some serious mental work ahead of me to get ready for next weeks event.

I will write more when I get better internet access.

Yesterday was “Andrew Jensen Golf Day” at the Hunt Club.  It was a little weird to be the main attraction, thankfully no one treated me like a big deal so it helps me stay grounded.

I went back home to Ottawa for this fundraiser.  I spent 3 days back home after 4 months on the road.  It was great to sleep in my own bed and really relax.  The days were all very busy with long lists of things to get done, so the sleeps in my own bed were much appreciated.

I want to thank everyone who came out yesterday to support me.  It was very humbling to receive all of the support.  We had a great day on the course, the weather was perfect and the the Hunt was in great shape.  I stood on the 15th tee and played the par 3 with every group that came through.  It was great to spend a hole with every group and at the same time work on the iron play and putting.

The best part was being able to personally thank everyone.  I have been away since January, so all of my thanks have been through the blog or email.  It was great to see people face to face and thank them for their support.

I left first thing this morning for Cancun.  I will get in this afternoon and have a condensed practice routine before the first round on Thursday.  I am currently in the Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Mexico.

I will keep you posted on the progress in Mexico.

I’m currently enjoying a great break between tournaments.  I’m having a great balance of work and relaxation.  I am going very hard in the gym working on increasing my strength and endurance.  At the range I am working very intently on the soft spots in my game based on my play in California.  I am getting a lot of reading done, and also working on some new ideas for my website.

Most importantly; after being apart for nearly 3 months, I am spending a lot of time relaxing with Chelsea and it’s perfect.

I’m using a lot of time to reflect and process everything that has happened so far this year.  To say that is was very overwhelming while it was happening would be quite the understatement.  It was such foreign territory that I was really just guessing at how to react and properly handle it all.  Looking back on the experiences to date, I can better prepare for the rest of the season.

The main thing I have learned is to calm down.  Everything happened so fast, and it still happens very fast around me.  I’m learning how to calm down and react to what is happening now, not what just happened.  It seems like I was always catching up to the latest experience(while a new experience was unfolding).  It was very hard for me to stop, and really take it all in.  The only time I did that was at The Grand Canyon.  The rest of the time, my world around me was moving at hyper speed and I was always playing catch up.

Now that I have 2 events under my belt, I know what to expect during a tournament week.  I know what the atmosphere will be like, I know how to spend my free time, I know how to handle all the travel arrangements  This knowledge will help me better prepare for the week and better handle myself during the week.

Ultimately, I’m now realizing how important time for rest is.  After more than 2 months of extensive training and then a month of traveling and competing, time to really unwind is much appreciated.  I can now see why the best players in the world rarely play more than 3 events in a row.

A great example of this desire for rest can be found with Adam Scott and his latest victory.  It was amazing to watch him win last week in Dallas.  What was even better was understanding his week before the event.  After the event in Houston, he went home to Australia to relax for a week before a 3 week swing.  Even with the jet set life, going home for a few days to unwind can do wonders for the mind and body.  I find a lot of inspiration and motivation from Adam Scott, and hearing him talk about the brief time off was exactly what I needed to hear.  Lets hope his play continues into the Players.

It is safe to say that the only victim of my time off is my blog.  It’s not a priority during this break.  It’s great on the road because it allows me to be effective with my spare time.  During this break, I’m trying to produce very little and just relax.