Kiwi golfer Amelia Garvey hopes to make the cut in her Major debut at the US Women's Open this week.
And despite a long lay-off from the game, due to COVID-19, the 20-year-old has full belief in her game to achieve that.
"The biggest goal for me is to make the weekend, which would be amazing," says New Zealand's top-ranked amateur.
"It's a Major championship and you want it to last as long as possible, so that is one of my performance goals. I do know I have the game to compete with these girls, but the biggest thing for me is to not let these performance goals hinder the amount of enjoyment I'm having out here.
"I need to make sure I take that step back and go 'This is my first Major tournament', and use this as an opportunity to learn from the best players in the world that are around me."
Garvey has received an exemption to play the US Women’s Open.
With the tournament’s qualifying events cancelled, the world's top 20 amateurs received an invite, but with several players ahead of her already exempt, 21st-ranked Garvey will also tee it up at the Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas.
The magnitude of her achievement is only just starting to sink in for Garvey, who arrived in the States on Saturday.
"It's all starting to sink in now," Garvey tells Newshub. "I've known I've been in the field for some time, but it hadn't sunk in until I got here.
"I'm surrounded by players I've looked up to my whole life and you start to realise that you're living the dream, something I wanted since I was a little girl.
"I started golf when I was six years old and it's always been one of my goals to get to a Major championship, so now it's about going out there enjoying it and performing as well."
The preparation for Garvey hasn't been the best, with the US Open being her first tournament in eight months, after the pandemic forced her back home from the University of Southern California, where she has been based the past three years.
"This is my first tournament in eight months, so being back home, there wasn't much to play at all and I had to withdraw from a few tournaments to protect my world ranking to get this opportunity. It was a tough decision, but it was one that was too good to turn down.
"It's probably not the best preparation for my first Major championship, but I just thought about what is the best way I can make use of my time at home and I feel like I've done that."
For the first time in US Women's Open history, the tournament will take place over two courses, which makes preparing for the tournament even harder.
"It has been different. Trying to prepare for the US Open over one course is already hard enough, but having to play two of them makes it twice the preparation."
The Christchurch local can't wait to get out there and compete, while also trusting all the work she has put in over her life.
"A lot of times you can over prepare for events like this, but at the end of the day, you're trying to get the ball in the hole in the least amount of shots and trusting I've done that a lot of times in my life, and going out there and enjoying it," Garvey says.
She will tee off on the 10th hole at 5:04am Friday (NZ time) with fallow Kiwi golfer Lydia Ko teeing off 48 minutes later at 5:48am.
This will be the first time since 2016, Ko will have another Kiwi for company in a golf Major.
