Andy Sullivan said he has been working on his short game and is feeling quite confident ahead of the inaugural Cazoo Classic despite an admitted lack of form over the past couple of weeks.
The Englishman has been inside the top 10 twice this season and finished in a tie for 26th at The Open, but recently missed the cut at the ISPS HANDA World Invitational and ended last week’s Hero Open in a tie for 48th.
Putting those results down to his short game, the four time European Tour winner said he is hoping to rectify that this week.
“I feel like the game is good,” said Sullivan, who currently ranks 46th on the 2021 Race to Dubai.
“I’ve been playing nicely without doing anything special just not being getting up and down around the greens enough in honesty. Short game has been letting me down, just absolutely zapping momentum halfway through rounds.
“I’ve been going along nicely, not getting up and down and you know come back a couple of shots or a shot and it’s like just completely zaps all momentum in the round so I’ve been doing a bit of work the last couple of weeks on that trying to you know get that tighter but the game feels in good shape.
“We’re all out here to be competitive, aren’t we, and when you’re not it is frustrating and there’s no hiding that and I’m not going to stand here and go I’m really happy I finished 50th the last two weeks because I’m not I’m fuming with it. I want to be at the top end of the leaderboard, it’s not nice going into Sunday’s and not really got much to play for so I’ll try and rectify that this week and make sure the short game is tight.”
“Loving the greens this week, the greens are really quick which is a lot more my alley so without having too much form coming in here I’m actually feeling quite confident my game. “
And while this week’s tournament marks the first time the European Tour has made a return to London Golf Club since 2014, but Sullivan is one player in the field who can draw on a much more recent experience.
Two years ago, he memorably made a hole in one during the European’s third episode of the Chase the Ace challenge video – which took place on the 11th hole of the Heritage Golf Course in 2019.
Reflecting on the day, Sullivan said it was truly the emotional rollercoaster that it looked.
"On the way here, in the car, I was more nervous than anything else," said Sullivan, who holed it on his 230th shot and then ran down the hill towards the green in celebration.
"You’ve got to do a video and hopefully give them some good content and I felt a bit under pressure just to hit a good shot almost and then it’s weird, you go through it and after the first few shots – I think it was about 20 balls in I genuinely thought I’ve got a chance of making one here. I don’t know why, it just sort of popped in there. I hit a few close, I hit the flag within the first 15 and then it got to a point where there was like a lull for what felt like forever. It wasn’t that long, it was probably like half an hour, 40 minutes where I didn’t really get one within inside five, ten feet and I was like this is just not going to happen.
"I think the funniest thing about the whole story is we went in for lunch, had an hour break, and everyone is like ‘what do you want for lunch?’ and I said ‘just get me two beers, two beers will do’. Chinned the first one, steady on the second one, thirty balls later it’s in, it’s done. So that was the key to it, but yeah, you just go through the emotions and you can see I was like up and down like a yo-yo, swearing off my head, it was genuinely that frustrating you know.
"I definitely wouldn’t fancy doing the run again, because I actually just looked at the hill again and thought how the hell did I not fall over down it, it’s actually quite steep."
