La Quinta ..

Seamus Power is quietly-confident a second full season on the PGA Tour will lead to eventually cementing his place on golf’s richest stage.

The 30-year old West Waterford golfer earned his card for this 2017/18 wraparound schedule by just $287 in a nail-biting scenario last October by taking the 25th and final place on the secondary Web.com play-offs money list.

Power immediately jumped aboard a flight out of Jacksonville and bound for the opposite side of the US continent to tee-up in the opening event of the new season – the Safeway Open but not suprisingly missing the cut after all the nerve-wracking drama of a few days earlier.

Seamus Power on the range after his opening round of 70 at the 2018 Career Builder Challenge. (Photo – www.golfbytourmiss.com)

Since then he’s played in a further five events and making the cut in three to be lying 134th on the money list.

However, the big plus on Power’s side now he is into 2018 proper and that is most of the courses he will tee-up on this year are venues that are no longer new to him as was the scenario for the then ‘rookie’ pro a year ago.

“Looking back on last year it had been a tough two last months to have been inside the top-125 all summer and to then lose out in the last week meaning I had to go to the play-offs,” he said.

“So while it was all a bit nerve-wracking in regaining my card, I am going to be in much the same position as I found myself last year, so we’ll see.  But then in saying that, I haven’t had the start this new season I would have wished but we’ll see and we’ll get it going.”

Power was speaking after posting a very respectable two-under par 70 on the ‘tougher’ Stadium Course at PGA West and one of three host venues for this week’s Career Builder Challenge at La Quinta in California.

Power’s round was a mix six birdies and four bogeys and with the highlight of his round in birding both the 16th and 17th holes, including holing a 30-foot birdie gem on the par-3 penultimate hole.

“Two under is not too bad and I didn’t hit it very well,” he said.

Irelland’s Seamus Power sporting a new sponsor on his bag in 2018 and the Canadian firm JBS Services – based out of Brampton, Ontario and specialising in building, automation, system and energy management.

“The Stadium Course is the harder of the three so I am looking forward to the La Quinta Country Club course as there is where you make your sure as we saw Jon Rahm do today.

“But then the good thing about this season, and that has been the case in a number of the events I have played this new season, and that is I am and will be returning to venues that were all new to me last year,” he said.

“It just seems already that every week I have played this new season is easier to kill and by that I mean I know what to expect in getting to venues and how the course is set-up plus aspects where the pins are usually located, and there is the smaller things like finding your way around the clubhouse and knowing where everything is located.

“They may be only small things but in a bigger picture that can be time-saving in terms of getting to know a course and those other things you need to know in heading to a tournament.

“So you’re not wandering around wasting time and asking questions of the Tour and knowing what it takes to win a particular week in terms of what rounds you need to produce and what usually is a winning score.

“Of course, this is only my second event of 2018 itself so I have not been able to put that theory to good use but even not playing great, everything does seem a little easier in this my second year out here on the Tour.

“So, I am no longer a rookie and I am over that excitement factor that I found myself dealing with last year and thinking also that every touranment I played last year was massively important whereas I am already now into the routine of tournaments and that can only be a plus this season.”

Power’s best-placed finish this new sesaon was a T18th at the Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson, Mississippi while he best result in the now 26 PGA Tour events he’s played was a T10th in last July’s Canadian Open.

“There is no reason why I cannot win out here and I know I am good enough to win on the PGA Tour but it is all a matter of getting everything in my game where I want it, so that I can challenge for a victory,” he said.

“But we’ll see and I will just keep working away and besides you never know when it comes right.”