Hi, my name is Chris Mundorf and I have been a student of Robert Linville for the past 17 years. I played collegiate golf at NC State University and have been playing professionally on many different tours for the past 7 years. Recently, I took the job of caddie for Troy Matteson on the PGA Tour as a way to make money to further my career as a professional golfer. As a bonus, I have been able to learn a lot about the Tour and its players. Hopefully, I’ll get my Tour card soon and be able to put this knowledge to good use.
Last week, we started the season at the Sony Open in Hawaii. What a great place! The temperature was incredible all week, 77 to 80 degrees everyday. Unfortunately, we had to deal with a “Kona” wind for most of the week. This is a wind that is almost 180 degrees from the normal direction. It brought in some nasty rain and made the course play really difficult. So much so that the Tour officials had at least 7 tee boxes moved up between 25 and 55 yards from where they typically are placed the first two days. A couple of holes had creeks at 240 yards from the tournament tee that at least 75% of the field would not have been able to clear with their tee shot. Pretty brutal considering how far most of the guys hit the ball!
As for Troy’s tournament, he played very solidly. He shot 71, 67, 69, 67 to finish T23. The grain on the greens made it pretty difficult to make anything outside of 8 to 10 feet, but it looked like he wasn’t the only one having trouble. He hit a lot of good putts, but not many went in. We all know that feeling! I’m confident about the way he’s playing though. I think he has some really good tournaments coming up. (Fantasy team hint!) It was a good way to get the season started.
Troy took this week off so that he could have some time to get his RV from Georgia to Phoenix. Kind of a long drive to make in a couple of days! He’s going to play the next four tournaments in a row, hopefully five if he plays well and gets into the Accenture Match Play. Keep your fingers crossed. Then, it’s back to the east coast for the Florida swing.
Keep checking in as I will be updating my travels weekly. Good luck and play well!
Chris
nice name