I won’t lie to you. It’s not being easy at all. 15 months ago, after a great start to the year, I was 50th in the Race To Dubai, now my reality is that I’m struggling to make a cut in the Challenge Tour. I’ve only scored 21 points all season.
Mentally it’s hard to manage. Week after week you see that you’re not able to feel comfortable on a golf course. You think you’re doing everything necessary to turn the situation around, but the results just don’t come.
I’ve only made two cuts this year, but the message I want to send is that I’m still fighting. I’m still very eager to turn the situation around. I love this sport. I love to compete and the spark is still there. It hurts to see myself like this, but it’s not going to be for lack of desire and hours of work. In fact, I’m writing these lines from the golf course parking lot, with frustration, but with the conviction that I hope to be able to find the key in my game.
As of today, the main part of my game that I need to recover is the drive. I can’t get good feelings with this shot and I always start the hole at a disadvantage. I’m always trailing and on the defensive, it’s hard. It’s vital to recover this facet.
Without intending to make excuses, the origin of this situation stems from a complicated injury I had last year in my neck. I had constant discomfort in two vertebrae that turned out to be a herniated disc. My body was asking me to stop. I tried to hit the ball, but at the time of impact it caused me terrible pain. However, I didn’t have a very good category to enter tournaments in the DP World Tour, I was well placed in the Race and in March I already had half the points to save the card and just received an invitation to play in Belgium. I decided to infiltrate myself to play there and keep adding up. Practically that same day my hands started to go numb and I started to feel tingling in my arm. I couldn’t play and had to withdraw from the tournament.
From there I started a small ordeal of injuries and relapses. I was almost four months without playing and forced to play the Open for which I had qualified in Australia. Later I did the same in Madrid and in Sotogrande. I ended up hurting myself more. Luckily, now the discomfort is less and the pain doesn’t prevent me from playing. However, during the months when I had relapses, to avoid discomfort I adopted certain unconscious gestures trying to protect my neck. I made some corrections at the last moment that have gradually taken over my swing and are still a burden.
To put it in some way, it’s like an emotional memory. When I go to hit I’m not afraid, I go all out, but at the moment of impact my body remembers what it has suffered and I end up blocking the shot and the ball goes flying anywhere. In addition, this situation ends up generating a lot of joint tension and other ailments come out. Logically, the rest of my game has also been ‘infected’.
I’ve been working on it for months. I’ve traveled twice to United States, to Dallas, to see Chris O’Connell, the coach among others of Andrea Pavan and Matt Kuchar, to fix these swing problems. It’s very frustrating. When I’m with him I recover those good feelings, I hit the ball as I want and I’m very comfortable. I’m clear about what I have to do and I regain the illusion. Well, as soon as I get on the tee of the 1 of the next tournament and the blockage in the neck returns. My body reminds me of what it has gone through. How to solve this? That’s the key to everything. A lot of technical work and a lot of mental work. As I said, it’s not going to be for lack of desire and hours of work.
Now the Challenge stops for two weeks and I was considering going back to Dallas to see Chris, but I think I also need to disconnect mentally and enjoy a little with my wife and daughters. It’s not easy to manage the situation of missing cuts one week yes and the other also. We’re going to take a few days to rest together and reset. We’re halfway through the season and it’s true that it hasn’t gone well at all, but it’s also true that there’s still a lot of year ahead.
By the way, I don’t want to say goodbye without congratulating Joel Moscatel on his second victory of the year. It’s impressive how well he’s playing, but I would tell you that it’s not what catches my attention the most. This last week in France we shared an apartment and I was able to see first hand how well he works. He’s a great professional who, in addition, has a very well furnished head and is psychologically more than prepared to face what lies ahead. I would have liked to have his head at that age. As I said, congratulations, and hopefully you will achieve much more success soon, you deserve it!. Meanwhile, I will continue working so that the next letters I write to you are more cheerful.
