Sixteen-year-old amateur Lev Grinberg credited table tennis and Netflix with getting him in the mindset to shoot his best DP World Tour round at the 2024 FedEx Open de France.
The Ukrainian matched experienced playing partner Yannik Paul shot for shot in an opening 66 at Le Golf National, ending his round five under par and just one stroke behind early clubhouse leaders Joe Dean and Thorbjørn Olesen.
Playing on familiar surroundings at the home of the French Golf Federation, where he is living in the dormitories as he develops his game in the ffgolf's academy, Grinberg made the most of his opportunity.
"It's definitely some experience," the teenager said. "I've worked really hard and I really had fun today.
"I stuck to my game plan. I had a very good mindset a couple of weeks before and a couple of days before going into this event.
"Playing on an Olympic golf course, playing any DP World Tour venues, it's great, and you just play with the pros. I'm very fortunate.
"I had a very nice group. The guys supported me, and it was a pretty good day today."
Grinberg's previous experience on the DP World Tour has come largely at the Soudal Open at his regular home course of Rinkven International GC in Antwerp, where he has appeared the last three years and made the cut as a 14-year-old in 2022 before contesting the Dutch Open two weeks later.
Here, Grinberg made three birdies in succession from the sixth hole to turn in 33 and, after a solitary dropped shot at the 11th, fired another hat-trick from the 14th to reach five under - level with Paul, who had five birdies on his back nine.
"Today was one of my first rounds where I didn't really think every hole how much under I was. I just played," Grinberg said.
"Yannik is a great player and has more experience than me and it's nice to see that I can keep up with him sometimes."
Paul had praise for his young playing partner and said: "Lev is a great young talent. I think he goes to the academy here and yeah, he played really well today.
"So it's obviously good vibes only when you have a good group and everyone is playing well."
On his preparation for the remainder of the week, Grinberg struck a relaxed tone.
He said: "I'm definitely going to have a good rest now. Do my normal routine. Play ping-pong with my friends in the evening. Have a good sleep. Watch Netflix. Practise, eat and yeah, same game plan tomorrow and see what happens.
"I think I'm going to have some fans hopefully tomorrow as well and I'm going to enjoy it. Just sort of admire that I'm here and have fun."
