Geary is one of the strong local hopes at the New Zealand Open at The Hills starting tomorrow.
He certainly has the pedigree, having played well at the course the first two times the Open has been played there.
Last year, he finished second at the New Zealand PGA in Christchurch and staged a thrilling bid to go one better at the Open a week later.
Geary (25) closed with a 1-under-par 71 to finish tied for fourth, seven shots behind runaway winner Alex Prugh.
"I only had a couple of bad holes that threw me out," Geary said as he recalled the tournament nine months ago.
"If I can get into good situations and avoid mistakes, I should be all right this week."
He said he was carrying new clubs in his bag and playing with a new ball, possible factors in his relatively poor performance at Clearwater last week.
Geary's strong start to 2009 appeared to fizzle out as he shuttled around the United States trying to qualify for events.
"It didn't quite work in the US. That was kind of frustrating after a great start to the year.
"I was playing a lot of Monday qualifying events. After not playing for two months I got frustrated, so I headed up to Canada for a while.
"It's hard to get the momentum going when you don't play two to three tournaments in a row."
Things picked up when Geary played in his first Major, the British Open, and finished so strongly on the Australasian Tour he ended up fourth on the order of merit with earnings of $A154,134 ($NZ195,000).
He feels his game is in good shape and he's looking forward to the Open, about eight events on the OneAsia Tour later in the year and a possible return to Canada.
New Zealand cricketer Brendon McCullum will swap bat for club at The Hills today.
McCullum is listed to play in the New Zealand Open pro-am in a BMW team with experienced New Zealand professional Michael Long.
Assuming he makes it back in time from Auckland, where he played cricket for Otago last night, McCullum will tee off at 1.30pm.
