alex noren, golfer on the move

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Good day:)
2009-09-10 Cloudy day at the course today but perfect weather to play in. Was paired with Trevor Immelman who won the 2008 Masters Tournament and Tongchai Jaidee who has won a few times so it was inspiring players to play with. Trevor is really systematical on the course and is a perfectionist and Tongchai is the opposite. He plays fast on instinct and feel. Im somewhere in between maybe, hard for me to tell but I would guess so. Trevor shot 2 under, I shot 1 under and Tongchai 3 over. In this tournament, we change pairings every day so tomorrow I play with Ricardo Gonzales and Rodney Pampling. Will be a fun day.

My game felt ok today so I´m excited for the next three days. The stronger club face feels like it´s the drill to go to for me at the moment! My drives definetily goes a lot further than when I had my club face open at adress. The course plays really nice here and the greens roll even better and faster than previous days. They are so smooth!

After the round, we went straight to the Mercedes-Benz test drive circuit to try some cars and to get a "lift" with a master-class sliding instructor and then with DTM driver Bruno Spengler in a serious fast and powerful car...looks like a space ship:)

Felt so sick after going around with this guy...He was soooo good at driving it was a joke! Thought we were going to crash in every corner but somehow he managed to save the car and our lives. Impressive!

Talked to some friends down in Australia this morning and they are true golfers...they breathe golf and they have built their own course in the backyard of their house. Rodger Paul and Will Kendall are the builders, architects, greenkeeping staff, players, boardmembers etc of this course...whatch out for these guys in the future!!! The course looks in great shape I would say, not long, but very tight and tricky:)

I´m gonna make one of these if I ever get a house with a backyard.

All the best guys and see you soon!

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Quality, not quantity:)
2009-09-09 Tried to catch up on some sleep and succeded for the first night in a while...first I was too nervous to sleep before the last round, then I was too happy to sleep after the tournament...but now I´m back to preparing for this week so trying to postpone the feelings from last week until next week when I am off and have time to celebrate.

Had a good practice day. Short but with quality as my caddie would say. I have a tendency to practice quantity more than quality and Colin is trying to change that. I listen to him and try really hard but it will take a while to always do it during practice. I love hitting a lot of balls and chips and puts without much thought. It feels like meditation for me...clears my head from everything else. But, it is not the most productive training. But, I can do it at home when he isn´t watching:)

Started with an hour on the putting green with a few exercises. One is trying to hole as many 13 footers you can out of 20 putts from about the same place. You start by estimating how many you will hole and then you see if you make as many or more. Hopefully you will estimate higher and make more putts as you train more and more. I did that exercise 6 times today from 6 different angels from the hole. The second exercise is to putt 20 3-footers in a row in a circle around the hole and see how many you make. This exercise helpes me realise I can hole out almost all of them all the time and it makes me hit longer putts more agressively. The last exercise is to just hit long putts to different holes to get the pace of the green and to instinctively get the lines without much reading. Last, a few long putts from the fringe to get the feeling from there as well.

Then me and my swing coach Pete Cowen had a session in the bunker, around the chipping green and on the range. More of a check-up than a lesson. I usually go 2-3 days a few times a year over to England to see him at his range to do most of the technique training. At tournaments, we mostly check if everything is ok and then practice the different shots required for the course that week. Still working on getting the club head more shut at adress which makes it stronger and a fraction shorter in the backswing which makes it easier to control in the downswing. I´m more aware of where the club face is.

A little gym session to finish off the day was nice. Now it´s Sweden-Malta on TV and then in the middle of the night Söderling plays Federer in the US Open. This summer I have been glued to all Söderling´s matches and been so hooked on tennis. Never met the guy but I´m so nervous when I watch him on TV it feels like it´s my brother playing. I love watching tennis but I suck at playing. It is such a nice TV sport. I think Söderling has a good chance to beat Federer tonight...we´ll see what happens.

See you later!

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Youtube searching...
2009-09-08 Training day for everybody out at Lärchenhof Golf Club. It's a Jack Nicklaus design course with very fast greens, some water and winding fairways. The course plays quit long and the 8th hole is the longest par 3 on tour. Last year Robert Karlsson won here. It´s a shame he can´t play this year but he will be back soon. We miss him out here!

Met up with Colin and did a warm-up session before playing the back nine with Thomas Aiken and Louis Oosthuizen. They are really good and easy going guys and we had a good time...have to admit I was very tired though. I´m not used to winning...it took a lot out of me!

Here is Aiken on the 16th tee...a car if you make it Thomas:)

A little realx time before a gym session...we stay at a pretty good hotel, but they have a gym that´s smaller then a normal bath room...if there are more than 3 people in there at the same time it feels crowded. No good equipment and no "Vein Man" here this week. Tried to get a good session in anyway and ended on the bike to "wash out the waste products in the body" like Pierre would say. I feel fresher already!:) Thanks Pierre!

Don´t try mixing the protein powder with sparkling water...thought it would be ok but I ended up cleaning half the bath room:)

Saw the coolest guy I´ve ever seen performing. His nickname is James Afro. Never seen anybody that happy to be on stage, excited to perform and confident in his ability!!! Here is the link:

Early bed time and some old Entourage episode. So mad that it was some kind of holiday in America so we have to wait another week to see a new episode...not fair:)

See you tomorrow!!!

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Crazy people!!!
2009-09-07 Couldn´t sleep very well last night! Was on such a high and everything felt so unreal! Always dreamt of winning on the European tour but never actually thought I could do it down the stretch and I was so happy to do it!

Woke up before the alarm to see if it all was just a good dream but it wasn´t:) The day continued well with a little bit of golf at the Pro-Am event "Velvet-Green" in Megéve, France. The most beautiful little alp village. 2000 people are living there all year round but then the place gets invaded by many many thousands of people during the winter and some weeks in the summer. I played with a French downhill skier that was racing at the same time as Ingemar Stenmark. He said Ingemar was "the man"!!! The village of Megéve sits in a little bowl and the mountains are all around it. Awesome!

The ski resort and the golf course share "club house":)

On the way back to Geneva Airport we saw Mont Blanc straight ahead. Looked cool!

The people living in these alp villages are absolutely crazy with all the stuff they are doing! Climbing, skiing, downhill biking, road biking, running, paragliding etc. One of the guys I played with today just ran a 107 kilometer race from Chamonix up through the mountains and finished in another village. It took him 22 hours. Absolutely crazy but very impressive! And it wasn´t just him being that crazy, they were 1000 runners in the race and it sounded like they all finished!!! That´s dedication for real!

On thursday starts the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Cologne, Germany played on a great course with super good greens. Bernhard Langer is the host player for the event and it´s looking like its going to be a great week!

See you later!

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Sweet taste!
2009-09-06 Well...today was the most fun I´ve ever had on a golf course. Was leading by 2 shots going in to the last round here in Switzerland and started with birdie-birdie so things were looking very good. Kept going pretty strong through the front nine but Bradley Dredge wanted to take over the lead. He wedged it in from 50 meters on 9, then birdie 10 and chipped in for birdie on 11. So, I went from leading by 4 shots to being tied with Dredge after that 11th hole. Still tied after 13. Then I birdied 14 and eagled 15 and was up by 2. Things were looking great again and finished 2 shots ahead in the end. I was very nervous but not as nervous as I thought I would be...weird that! Thought I was going to shake like crazy...usually get a little nervous for a lot of things but I guess I felt I was playing well...don´t really know. All I can say is that I´ve never been this happy before!

Always wondered how it is inside that press room and I found out today. It´s nice after a win to sit there and answer questions...everything felt so easy...

Then it was time for some winding road driving up to a little ski village called Megéve close to Chamonix. Peak Performance is the clothing sponsor for the Pro-Am they have here tomorrow and I wanted to join up and see this place. It´s a really cool place and the Pro-Am is supposed to be a good one with a lot of good French professionals.

Tomorrow afternoon though, me and my agent Johan Elliot are heading to Cologne for the Mercedes-Benz Championship. I wasn´t in that tournament before this week started but the win got me in...feels awesome!

Gotta take some cool pictures of this place tomorrow. We drove past Mont Blanc on the way here and it looked unreal with all the steep mountain tops.

See you tomorrow and sleep well...I will.

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