Matt Wallace diary day five: Players Championship reflections & looking forward to the Masters
- Published
Matt Wallace completed his Players Championship debut with a two-under-par 70 to finish at six under overall. Despite a bogey at the last where he found the water with his second shot, the 28-year-old Londoner was still pleased with a week spent in the company of the world's best golfers. Here is his final entry in his exclusive Players diary for BBC Sport.
If you had told me this time last year that I would finish tied 30th at the Players Championship at Sawgrass, I would have bitten your hand off.
We have come a long way and we are here at the top table now - and I have to press on from this kind of result.
It was a mixed bag to finish off. There was some really good stuff, some not so good and then some really bad as well.
It was tough out there on Sunday. It was cold, swirling winds and wet. But it was manageable and you could take advantage of some holes.
This is a course where you will get easy holes and you have to make your birdies there, and then you have to really concentrate on the hard ones.
The biggest thing I've learned, not just from this event but the last four weeks that I have been away, is that you cannot let the last shot affect you at all. I used to be very good at that but I let that attitude slip a little bit the better I was trying to become.
Bad shots would frustrate me but out here you cannot get frustrated because that next stroke is so important. I've learned that aspect and I have done well with it.
If you look at my scorecards when I have had bogeys I have come back with birdies. Overall this week was great fun and I'm delighted to have come off the 17th with four par-threes.
I hit the middle of the green each time. The stats show every time you do that you pick up 0.2 of a shot on the field so that's 0.8 of a stroke throughout the week, which is pretty good.
What is most important from this week is knowing where they put the pins, how the course plays around the greens. I was seeing stuff that I did not want to see because I did not know what was going on with that green depending on where the hole is.
Next year I will be able to attack some flags and stay wary on others.
Furthermore, this is a stage where I feel I belong. It is nice that people here know my name and they gave me a lot of encouragement. I try to give back to the fans because they are coming out to watch us and I like interacting with them.
It is brilliant over here, the American fans are fantastic.
Now I'm heading home to get the keys to our new house, which I'm really excited about. Then I fly back to the States for the WGC Matchplay in Austin, which starts on 27 March.
Then it will be a week off before my debut at the Masters. Life is brilliant right now and I have to smell the roses sometimes.
I've played great, driven the ball fantastically, apart from in my final round here, and there are so many positives I can take into the coming weeks.
When I play well I know I can give myself a chance on this tour, like I did at Bay Hill last week where I finished sixth. We should hopefully knock off one of these tournaments soon.
Matt Wallace was speaking to BBC golf correspondent Iain Carter.