Johanna Gustavsson had her best season to date ending the year in third place on the 2022 Race to Costa del Sol and seven top-10 finishes.
The Swede played in 25 LET events accruing 1,946.08 points and also captained her team to victory to win the Team event at the Aramco Team Series – New York.
And the 30-year-old is looking forward to beginning the 2023 LET season at the Magical Kenya Ladies Open – where she finished in a share of eighth place.
“It feels good, I feel refreshed,” she said. “It’s been good to have some off time and then getting back practising a bit, it’s nice to be back in Kenya as well with the nice weather.
“We’ve got a studio in our garage at home so I’ve been hitting it against a screen a lot this winter. I haven’t been anywhere practising so this will be my first week back out on the grass again, so I don’t have too high expectations going into this week.”
After playing in so many events last year, Gustavsson admitted later on in the year that she probably did play in too many.
However, the Swede will start the year strong with plenty of starts and see how the year pans out for the rest of her schedule.
Despite getting excellent results in 2022, Gustavsson doesn’t want to have results-based goals this season and instead is focusing on her mentality and approach on the golf course.
“I talked a lot about my schedule last year, and how I played maybe too much,” she explained. “I’ve learned but I’ve still signed up to a lot of tournaments this year! I’ll be playing quite a lot at the beginning then see how the year progresses.
“I’ve set myself some different goals this year, I’m just trying to set up some goals that I can keep throughout the year – not so much result-based but mentality goals and how I want to think out on the course and handle myself out there – so I’ll put quite a lot of focus on that this year and hopefully the results will come as well.”
In her first outing at Vipingo Ridge, Gustavsson finished in a share of 34th place and last time out it was a top-10 result.
Knowing the course and playing well here previously is an advantage, but it’s the first event of the year and the 30-year-old also knows she will have to have a lot of patience this week.
She added: “I know I’ve played pretty good here before and I know the course well, but this week will be good to see where my game is at ahead of the big events coming up, hopefully I can do well this week.
“I don’t really want to put any results-based goals out there because it can be quite hard, you can have a really great week, but someone can always have a better one.
“This course is a big challenge. I think you have to be very patient and as it’s the first tournament you’re a bit rusty going into it. It’s a tough course and you have to hit good tee shots, but it’s a good challenge for my new mental goals.”
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