Seamus Power is enjoying a "dream couple of weeks" as he prepares to tee it up at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
Irishman Power heads into the first Rolex Series event of 2023 on the back of his Hero Cup performances last week - a tournament that gave him the opportunity to get to know some new faces from the DP World Tour.
Great Britain and Ireland lost out to Continental Europe at Abu Dhabi Golf Club but Power was quick to pick the positives.
He said: "That's one of the things I was looking forward to the most. I would have known the names of the guys on the team last week but not actually the person, so that part was fantastic.
"To get over here for two weeks and get to know some of those guys and play, it's been a dream couple of weeks."
A two-time PGA Tour winner, 35-year-old Power is based in the United States, and he would love to take on the Americans in the Ryder Cup later this year in Italy.
He said: "I took a lot from it (the Hero Cup). One is you don't play a lot of match play anymore, so getting reminded of the difference is the biggest to me.
"You realise looking back on the matches, we didn't play as well as we wanted but there's one or two massive moments in match play that can change the whole match.
"In stroke play, you have the ability to kind of turn it around more. In match play, you lose the tee box or lose momentum and things can change very, very quickly.
"Again, from playing mostly in the US, you get things tilted that way when you're in the US and you think, you just hear about how many good players are in the US. Like all of a sudden last week I played against guys that were fantastic players and you see the depth of talent.
"When you talk about Rory (McIlroy), Jon (Rahm), Viktor (Hovland), and Fitz (Matt Fitzpatrick) not being there; it was amazing to see.
"I played with Nicolai (Højgaard) on Sunday. Amazing player, huge, talented player. Bob MacIntyre in fourball was a joy to play with, so easy-going, a lovely player.
"Those things were my biggest takeaways. I know I have to work hard and play very well this week if I want a chance to be in Rome."
This is Power's first visit to Yas Links and he has become an instant fan of this week's venue.
He added: "If it's not the best conditioned course I've ever seen it's definitely close. A beautiful setting.
"I didn't realise what I was coming to. It's gorgeous and that whole set-up is top-notch. It's been great.
"(The course) is so different, because it looks different, but it plays like a links course to me.
"It's much greener. We play in the summer when courses are running as fast as this one. It's burned out fairways like we saw a couple summers ago at Carnoustie and we had fairways running forever. These fairways are green and in perfect condition and running fast. It's unusual because visually it looks a little different."
Power heads out with MacIntyre again, with Alex Noren joining them for the first two rounds, teeing off at 7.40am local time on Thursday.
