Fred Funk is playing in his first event as a senior after turning 50 recently. Funk, who will play on both the PGA Tour and Champions Tours over the next year or so, is trying to join 11 other players who have won their first senior event in the first crack. This week Funk shares his thoughts with www.ussenioropen.com.

It was awful today.  So it was very, very disappointing.  Maybe doubly disappointing because everybody was great - they were all real gracious - they seemed really happy that I was here.  And starting this chapter in my life, I guess, and being a part of their tour and they generally seem to enjoy the fact that I was here.  And that made me feel really good.  And you know the expectations were high on me and I just put a lot of pressure on myself, and I was anxious in the beginning and then my putter just turned out to be, unfortunately, worse than I would have imagined it today. (Funk took 30 putts).

I didn't shoot my way out of it. I guess that's one good thing.  And I really could see myself shooting lower, unless the wind really starts howling. There's a lot of short wedges in these holes, but tricky pins.  But there are still a lot of birdies out there; you just got to get by a couple of the tough holes and today I didn't take advantage of any of my good shots. And I threw away a couple others that were, actually, when I had a chance to get up and down and didn't.  So it was frustrating to say the least.

Since this is my first event. It is very difficult this week.  The rough is thick as you'll ever see in any major.  I think it's as thick as or maybe even thicker than Winged Foot this year.  So it's a very difficult golf course.  Just doesn't have the length of some of the golf courses that we play, but that's not the issue with this golf course.  It's a position golf course.  And when you get the wind blowing and tricky greens, you don't need that kind of length.  And like you see, 3 under is quite a testament to really how tough the golf course is.  Because it really wasn't that tough a day out there.  So I'm pleased with the fact that nobody really ran out and hid.  Not that you can the first day, but I could see shooting 65 or 64 over 63 out there if you really get it going.  And nobody did that today.

All that being said, for me to get it going I can't putt like I did today; I'd have no chance.  Nobody does.  You just can't play when you're not making anything.  And it makes it really frustrating because that's the most important club in your bag. You got to have that

working and when that's not working it puts so much heat on everything else. It gets you down.  It just gets you really frustrated because, I mean, again when you feel like you hit a good shot and then you walk away with a par, you feel like you let one go and then you feel like when you don't hit a good shot. You feel like, ‘Geez, am I going to be able to save par?'  And you feel like you got to almost knock the flagstick down with your irons or when you have to chip, you feel like you got to knock it to a gimmie range. It's been like that all year this year.