The 21-year-old Sydneysider defied heavy morning fog to sign for a three-over 74 in the opening round of the Northern Territory PGA at Palmerston Golf and Country Club on Thursday.
"It was weird," Guan said of the foggy conditions.
"I took out my rangefinder on the first tee and I was trying to laser the tree at the back and then all of a sudden it was only eight metres and I'm like 'Oh, okay. That's a great start'."It didn't help that after I hit the ball, I had no idea where it was either.
"It was a bit of a weird, rough start as well as some unfortunate breaks on the fairways on the early holes, but that's just golf. That's just the game. That's why I enjoy it."
Only a couple of weeks after missing the cut by a single shot when making his US PGA Tour debut on a sponsor's exemption last September, tragedy struck for Guan at a pro-am event in NSW.
The former junior prodigy was hospitalised after being struck in the eye by a wayward golf ball.
Despite undergoing multiple rounds of surgery, medical staff were unable to reverse the loss of vision in his left eye.
The opening round of the NT PGA on Thursday was only the third time Guan had completed an 18-hole round since the accident.
He double-bogeyed his penultimate hole on Thursday as fatigue set in but fought back hard to birdie the last.
"Teeing off the first was genuinely a great feeling," he said.
"I wasn't nervous at all from what I predicted the past couple of days, but there was a lot of mistakes out there and heaps of room for improvement."I'll definitely take this as a good heads up for the next couple of days and let's see if I can shoot a couple under par."I'm sort of getting back into the form that I felt prior to the accident.
"I hit a lot of shots out the middle of the face, mainly off the tee, which probably was the highlight of the day."
Queenslander Jack Munro and New Zealander Jimmy Zheng held the clubhouse lead at four-under-67 after the morning rounds, with 20 players within two shots of the lead.
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