Out in the third group off the day from the 10th tee at the Tailor-made Building Services NT PGA Championship at Palmerston Golf and Country Club, Guan and playing partners were met by an unusually heavy fog.<\/p>\n
It added an element the 21-year-old was not expecting ahead of his first professional round since a tragic accident less than 12 months ago that left him blind in his left eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was weird,\u201d Guan said of conditions on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took out my rangefinder on the first tee and I was trying to laser the tree at the back and then all of a sudden it was only eight metres. I\u2019m like, Oh, okay. That\u2019s a great start.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t help that after I hit the ball, I had no idea where it was either. It was a bit of a weird, rough start as well as some unfortunate breaks on the fairways on the early holes, but that\u2019s just golf. That\u2019s just the game. That\u2019s why I enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n
After missing the fairway just left at the par-4 10th, Guan pierced a gap in the trees with a 6-iron to 20 feet in the first sign that the talent that took him all the way to the PGA TOUR had not left him.<\/p>\n
The birdie putt came up just short but a two-putt par was an ideal way to settle the nerves.<\/p>\n
He hit a towering tee shot over the trees down the left of the par-4 12th only to have his ball come to rest in a divot in the fairway, his resulting pitch to the fringe of the green and three putts leading to an early bogey.<\/p>\n
There were further bogeys at 14 and 15 as he turned in 3-over but clawed one back with a welcomed birdie at the short par-4 fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great tee shot,\u201d said Guan. \u201cAnd then I left myself a pretty nice putt. I holed a couple putts before that, so I was feeling good with the putter, and then as soon as that went in, my dad gave me a really big fist pump and said, \u2018Here we go. This is the turning point.,\u201d<\/p>\n
Playing just his third 18-hole round of golf since the accident, fatigue contributed to a double-bogey at the par-4 eighth but he bounced back with birdie at his final hole of what is likely the most challenging round of golf he has ever played in his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeeing off the first was genuinely a great feeling,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t nervous at all from what I predicted the past couple of days, but there was a lot of mistakes out there and heaps of room for improvement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll definitely take this as a good heads up for the next couple of days and let\u2019s see if I can shoot a couple under par.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sort of getting back into the form that I felt prior to the accident. I hit a lot of shots out the middle of the face, mainly off the tee, which probably was the highlight of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy tee shots were very good, but then I hit some very loose shots towards the end around the greens. That cost me a double and then a couple shots that I could have saved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019ve got a good feel of the course now and then with what I\u2019ve done out there today, I know what I need to work on maybe this afternoon or tomorrow morning just to hopefully get that sorted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gold Coaster Jack Munro and Kiwi Jimmy Zheng posted the best of the morning scores with rounds of 4-under 67 with a total of 20 players within two shots of the lead.<\/p>\n
Photo: Monica Marchesani\/PGA of Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Out in the third group off the day from the 10th tee at the Tailor-made Building Services NT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-102811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}