CIMB champ Leishman hopes to improve on CJ runner-up

Marc Leishman is back in Korea with momentum on his side, hoping to fare a little better than a year ago.

Leishman nearly took home the trophy in the inaugural CJ Cup, making birdie on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Justin Thomas. But the Aussie put his approach into the water on the second extra hole, allowing Thomas to wrap up the win a few minutes later.

“Excited to be back in Korea. I have a lot of good memories here at this golf course,” Leishman told reporters. “Hopefully I can play well again and go one better than last year.”

Leishman’s playoff loss kick-started a strong opening stretch to his wraparound season, but he closed it without a victory. That drought ended in emphatic fashion last week, as he cruised to a five-shot win at the CIMB Classic in Malaysia for his fourth career PGA Tour win and his third since March 2017.

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Leishman told reporters last week in Malaysia that before the week started, his driving was so crooked that he feared his equipment reps might need to add a few golf balls to his locker. Instead, he found his groove en route to shooting 26 under par at TPC Kuala Lumpur and leaving the field in his wake.

“Golf’s a funny game. It can change very quickly from bad to good or from good to bad,” Leishman said. “It was certainly a goal of mine to win this season, and to win my first event of the season is great. Also to be going back to Maui puts me in a different frame of mind for the whole year. For a lot of reasons, I’m really happy with what last week brought.”

Leishman played on the Korean PGA Tour in 2006 while getting his pro career off the ground, but even with that experience he expects a learning curve while going from the steamy conditions of Malaysia to the cool and wet climate that has greeted players this week on Jeju Island.

“It’s a big adjustment going from so hot and humid last week to fairly cold and hopefully not wet, but it was wet this morning,” Leishman said. “The ball goes different distances, your body’s not quite as loose as what it is when it’s hot. Just little things like that that you have to adjust to.”