By PGA Tour star and Met Area native Marc Turnesa

as told to Greg Midland

Editor’s note: Marc Turnesa, 30, is competing in the Mercedes-Benz Championship this week in Hawaii. He earned a spot in the event by winning the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas in October. Turnesa grew up on Long Island and is a member of one of the Met Area’s most famous golf families. He is a former Met Junior Champion (1994) and played his college golf at North Carolina State University before finishing 16th on the 2007 Nationwide Tour Money List to earn his PGA Tour Card.

ELMSFORD, N.Y. (Thursday, January 8, 2009) - It’s another beautiful morning on Maui, and I’ll be teeing off in the first round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship in about three hours.  Yesterday’s Pro-Am was great. I played with singer Michael Bolton, who played to a 10 Course Handicap and hit the ball really well, and the other guys in our group all worked for Mercedes. It was a long round…we teed off at 12:20 and didn’t finish until it was almost dark. But we had fun. Michael is a member of Rockrimmon Country Club in Connecticut, so he and I talked a lot about courses in the  Met Area. I see these Pro-Ams as being an opportunity for me to continue to learn the golf course but also to do what I can to help the guys have a good time. I feel I can do both, and it’s important for us as pros to interact with the amateurs we play with.

You might have read a few stories about the perks the players get at this tournament, and I can say that they’re all true. Everything is first class, from the accommodations to the food, and while I haven’t yet taken one of the whale watch trips they organize for the players, I heard it was worth doing so I might try and get on a boat later today after my round. Although you can actually see the whales – or at least the spray when they jump out of the water – from the most of the holes on the golf course!

I decided to play by myself rather than opting to have a marker play with me. I’m pretty excited to hit the first shot of the 2009 PGA Tour season. They actually make a big deal out of it…I’ve been told they sing the national anthem before I tee off and will have a helicopter fly-by, which should be cool. Look for the highlights later tonight on The Golf Channel!

The key for my first round is to pace myself and not rush anything, because with all the hills there’s no way you can run around this golf course, even playing by yourself. After playing three full practice rounds, I can say without question that the only way to score low here is to play well around the greens. I love grainy, Bermuda grass greens, but these are really difficult because of the combination of grain and slope. I’ll need to make confident strokes on every putt.  

My mom flew in yesterday and will be in the gallery cheering me on, and she’s actually going to stay and watch me in next week’s Sony Open over in Honolulu. But first things first – I have to get to the range and warm up so I can go out there and play well. Basically I’m going to have fun – I’m in Maui! Thanks for all the comments of support and I’ll check back in tomorrow.

Live Scoring

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Happy New Year Met Area golf fans, and Aloha from Maui! I arrived here on Saturday night to give myself a couple days to adjust to the five-hour time difference before the first official PGA Tour event of the 2009 season. During the last two days I’ve been playing some golf, practicing, and hanging out at the pool a little bit. Today I will play another practice round and gear up for Wednesday’s pro-am.

The Plantation Course at Kapalua is awesome. I played 9 holes on Sunday and 18 yesterday. I’ve been to Hawaii before but this is my first time on Maui, and this course is very different from any other place we play on Tour. There’s a ton of wind and a lot of elevation all around the property. It’s going to be a tough course to walk. In fact, they give us carts for the practice rounds and even for the pro-am – it wears you down just riding the course! But it’s beautiful out here.

The greens here can be tough to read. There’s quite a bit of grain, and there’s a lot of slope. It seems like the green speeds are very consistent, but sometimes reading the slope can be difficult, especially when the putt breaks toward the ocean but the green is tilted away from the ocean.

My caddie is getting all the uphill and downhill elevation changes mapped out, which is a good thing, because on a couple shots you can have at least a 100-foot difference. I’m learning where I want to be on the various holes and getting comfortable playing in the wind. We’ve had the trade winds blowing the last couple days, so as long as it keeps blowing in this same direction, there shouldn’t be too many surprises out there. Now if the wind turns, which it can, then it could make things really interesting. It would be a wind I’ve never seen and the golf course will be completely different.

It’s a totally different feel out here when there are only 33 guys in the field. You go out and play a practice round and you can go a couple holes without seeing anyone else. It’s definitely the first tournament like this that I’ve played in, and it’s kind of nice that the range isn’t crowded, nothing’s crowded, I can just go out and do my thing. And you’re playing with the winners from 2008, so it’s a good feeling to be part of that group.

I’ll check back in after the pro-am and let you know how it went. That’s all for now – thanks for reading!

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