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PGA TOUR MEDIA CONFERENCEJuly 8, 2010Paul GoydosMARK STEVENS: Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to welcome Paul Goydos, fresh off his 59 today. He becomes one of four people in TOUR history with a 59. Paul, if you'd start off and just make some general comments about your round today and what this means to you and its place in TOUR history, and then we'll go ahead and take some questions. PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know if I can answer that question. I played good. Wow, you know, 59 is a pretty iconic number, and I keep going wow. It's just one of those days where I played well, I putted well, I chipped well, I thought well, and someone was smiling on me; so it was just a really, really good day. You know, that sounds to understate the achievement, but it's still sinking in. MARK STEVENS: Okay. Questions? Q. Congratulations, Paul. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. Thank you for your time. I just wanted to ask you generally, I mean, as you mentioned, it's only happened four times, and with all the games and equipment over the years, and you know, golfers being fitter and more in shape and all the things that we talk about and hear about, why do you think this hasn't happened more often? PAUL GOYDOS: I just feel golf's hard. It's hard for everybody. Eventually it gets to everybody, too. You know, it's an interesting question. It's just a really low, low, low number. I think previous to this the best I had shot on TOUR was 62. And I think there's a little bit of a barrier sitting there. I would imagine there have been a boatload of 60s compared to how many 59s there are. And I do think that there's a slight psychological barrier to that score, too. To me it kind of came upon me kind of quick. It wasn't like I had to birdie the last four to get there. I had to birdie the last three holes. That could be part of it, but the reality is I don't have any idea. (Laughs). Q. Hey, Paul, congratulations on the 59. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. You've obviously had an up-and-down year, I think seven missed cuts, 10 made cuts, tough final round at THE PLAYERS Championship. Did you see anything in your game coming into this week that would resemble anything that would produce the kind of golf you had today? PAUL GOYDOS: I would be hard pressed to say anybody really sees this type of round coming on. Having said that, I definitely was scuttling on the bottom of the ocean here the last three or four months, but I thought I was getting better. You know, last week I missed the cut, but I did some good things. I thought my game was getting better. I just needed to have some good things happen more than anything. And today, all the bad bounces and all the buried balls and bunkers and three-putts or whatever that happened the last three and a half months kind of got evened out today, you know, for lack of a better word. It just was one of those days where every good thing that can happen happened, and every putt I hit went right in the middle. And people ask me how or why, and I really don't have an answer to that. I played good, but I could have played good and shot 65 or 4. I played good and shot 59. There's something going on there that's maybe a little unexplainable. Q. Paul, could you just take me through your mindset on that last hole, what you were thinking, from tee shot to a holed putt? PAUL GOYDOS: Are you the guy who writes the hot or not column? Q. Do I do what? PAUL GOYDOS: Are you the one that writes who's hot or who's not or whatever column? Q. No. That's Alan Shipnuck over at SI. PAUL GOYDOS: I knew it was somebody. The last hole -- I was pretty normal, for lack of a better word, the first 17 holes. I was much more nervous on the 18th tee than I was on any other tee shot. I kind of said on 16, hey, you got three holes, you make three birdies, you're going to shoot 59. Those opportunities just don't come very often. You know, but let's see what happens, you know. Let's take the bull by the horns, in a sense, as opposed to, you know, anything else. Let's don't worry about superstitions or whatever. But the last hole I was pretty nervous. I hit a good tee shot, probably as good of tee shot as I hit all day. And then I hit as good a second shot. I hit it 173 or 4 yards on the second shot, and I can't hit a 7-iron that far, but I had enough adrenaline. And I could not have hit it better, and I hit it about seven feet, and as I said, that was probably the most nervous I'd been over a putt in my career. I've had two putts that won tournaments in a sense, but they were just barely longer than a tap-in. That was the most nervous I probably have been on the golf course. Q. Do you have any plans for what you're going to do with that ball? Is that going to the Hall of Fame? PAUL GOYDOS: I have the ball -- the hole that I putted out with on 18 is in my pocket, and I'll probably hang onto that. I used six balls today, and I gave two of them away to our volunteers, the standard bearer and the walking score. And I think some of them might end up in Hall of Fame. I really don't know exactly where they're going to end up. But I'm definitely keeping one. Q. Who's the most surprising person to congratulate you so far? PAUL GOYDOS: You know, I've gotten about 50 text messages. I haven't had time to look exactly. I don't know. I can't answer that question because there's been -- I haven't got a chance to do -- the media stuff has been a little -- the most crazy thing is how much media I've had to do within the last two or three hours. I shot 59, I do my media and that wouldn't be bad, but it didn't quite work out that way. Q. Thanks a lot. PAUL GOYDOS: Okay. Q. Congratulations, Paul. You sort of answered my question about when you started thinking about it, so I was just wondering, after that round at Pebble Beach, did that round stay with you or that hole stay with you for a while because you haven't really played that well since then? PAUL GOYDOS: I haven't played well since then. I think it stayed with me a little bit. I don't know if it affected my play, at least I hope it didn't. But definitely it's sticking with me today. But that's part of the deal. I haven't played well in the last -- since then, and you can do the math there a little bit, and I would say it's affected me a little bit, but also, you can look back at the history of my career, and May and June have never been great months for me. I've had a couple of good events. This is not atypical for me to struggle for months at a time. It's just been one of those things, but I think it's been getting better. It just takes time sometimes. Q. What was your low round with your buddies in Orange County ever? PAUL GOYDOS: I shot 60 at Dove. I parred the last four holes. I had to birdie the last one to shoot 59. And I shot 60. I might have shot one other 60 somewhere. I don't really remember. But that one stands out. There's no other -- 59 in a TOUR event is pretty cool. Q. Thanks a lot. Paul, let me add my congratulations to the list. You mentioned that you had to birdie the last three, and it seems to me that in that boatload of 60s that are floating out there on the PGA TOUR over time, there were guys that were looking at maybe three birdies to get to 59 and couldn't do it. How did you manage to not put too much pressure on yourself? PAUL GOYDOS: Well, I think, you know, we were talking, you know, they talk about being in the zone. And that's a weird kind of thing, but the reality was is that it's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg issue there. I think when you're playing really well, I was very happy. My game just got better and better as the day went on. I was much more comfortable with my game on the fifth hole than I was on the fourth hole, and the game just kept getting stronger and stronger. 16 and 17 are not the hardest holes, probably will play under par today for the field. One's a par-5. One's a par-3. Again, the greens are soft. They've had a lot of rain. I think they've had one of the rainiest last couple weeks they've ever had in this area, but the golf course is in tremendous shape, and I think that helps your scoring. But you know, just everything was good. You know, I think part of it was my subconscious and I kind of got on auto pilot a little bit and stayed out of my own way. It wasn't a conscious effort to stay out of my own way. I just kind of did. And again, I was playing good, and one of the keys to being successful out here is not just playing well, but taking advantage of playing well. And one of the things I kind of was talking about, hey, you got a good round going, you're playing good. You hear people talk about not taking your foot off the gas, whatever. I'm saying just keep playing good. Know you're playing good, keep trying to hit good shots and whatnot and don't back down, for lack of a better word. Don't accept the fact that you are 7-under or 6-under and that's a good score. Quite frankly, I'm 12-under. 12-under is not going to win this tournament. So it wasn't a function of letting myself do it. It's more a function of it just kind of happened. Q. You've had some really good putting stretches in the past, but today I imagine anybody that shoots 59 has to have a couple of bombs. PAUL GOYDOS: Right. Q. Was today, your results aside, one of your better putting days anyway? PAUL GOYDOS: Without question. Not only were they going in, they were going in in the middle. Most of the putts five, eight feet from the hole there was no question where they were going. Just you know, one of those days. The big part of that, again, I tend to do that. If I make one, I tend to make two, I tend to make three, I tend to make four, in a given day. Very rarely will I have a round where I make a 20-footer on the second hole and that's the only 20-footer I make all day. So I just kind of got off to a good start with the putter, and it just kind of snowballed to a level that was pretty amazing. Q. You mentioned the 62 that was your previous TOUR best. Was that any shot at 59, even early? PAUL GOYDOS: I've shot two 62s, and the last one was at Frys, at Gray Hawk, and no, I birdied a couple holes coming in just to shoot that. I shot 62 at the Byron Nelson a while back, actually in the same group. I was playing with Tiger Woods and Nick Price, and that one, yeah, I had some chances. That's only par 70, and I shot 28 on my first nine holes and made a couple of early birdies, I think, on the Back 9. But then I missed the shortest birdie putt on 16 and I needed to actually hole in from the fairway on the last hole to shoot 59 and actually bogeyed the hole. And then of course, the thing that's great I wasn't even low in the group. Tiger shot 61. Q. That was going to be my next question. PAUL GOYDOS: Ben Price shot 63. So our group shot 186, which I guarantee you is the lowest group in the history of the PGA TOUR. Q. I bet. Well, congratulations again. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. Hi, Paul. Congratulations. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. I've got a couple questions. First, you mentioned sort of an iconic number. I was curious, you have a good sense of history. What does it mean sort of in the wider context of golf history? In many ways it seems like it's probably the most magical number in the sport, isn't it? PAUL GOYDOS: I would agree. Obviously 1 is a pretty magical number in our sport, too, but it happens obviously a lot more. Yeah, it's a big number. To put myself in the context of history I think is a little more difficult. I wouldn't say I'm very good at that. But you know, it's been done four times. I'm the oldest. That means something. I think there was an earlier question about why it hasn't happened to more. I think that's a pretty interesting question and maybe even worth some investigation, but it's just an iconic number, and I really don't have a good -- I'm flabbergasted by the attention it's getting as it is. I mean they've asked me a number of times would you rather shoot 59 and finish third or shoot whatever and win the tournament. To me there's not even an answer to that question. It's obvious I'd rather win the golf tournament. Q. Right. PAUL GOYDOS: You shoot a 59, you know, but I couldn't be happier and I couldn't be more excited and whatnot, but I'm here to win the golf tournament. But I think in the same sense that when 10 years from now or 20 years from now, when people talk about Paul Goydos, I think I'll be more known at this point in time for shooting 59 than anything else. Q. Right. PAUL GOYDOS: I think I'm more known for finishing second in THE PLAYERS than I am for winning the two events I did win. But I think from what's going to stand out in my career to the media and to the public, I think this is going to be at this point in time the biggest thing. Q. Do you have any sort of grasp of that even a couple hours later? PAUL GOYDOS: I'm starting to. I think the putt I shot 59 is one of those things to me a bucket list kind of thing for a TOUR player. Shooting a round in the 50s is pretty cool. I got a bunch of nines in the 20s, which to me is pretty cool. But I've had a couple of chances at home with friends to shoot 59 and didn't. And you know, I think I've made 10 hole-in-ones, and I can tell you exactly where they were; and I've made three double eagles, and I can tell you exactly where they were. And this is just the cream at the top. When I look at myself, what I've done with my career, the two wins will be on top, but the 59 is going to be hanging in there at third. Q. And you made a passing reference to the Pebble Beach moment, obviously, which I think we talked about many times. PAUL GOYDOS: The massacre at the 14th? Q. You handled that with obviously great grace, but you know, how much did you look back? How much did it really affect you, and -- PAUL GOYDOS: I think it has to affect you. I'd be lying to say it didn't. I mean it still -- I played my practice round at the U.S. Open on Tuesday and walked up to that hole and almost got sick. They grew rough. I mean it's easier now. But it's part of the game, and the events of this game will get to everybody. You know, am I happy with the way that worked out, no. But you know, it is what it is, and I haven't played well since then, but again, part of that I think is that issue. I think part of it is also -- me going into a four-month slump is not like newsworthy. I've done it just about every year in my career. I look back when I won Sony, I didn't play well the rest of the year. When I won Bay Hill, I went into a slump, too, so whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, I tend to follow it up with slumps. But hopefully this will be the start of an uptake in my game, and I've obviously played well today, hopefully I can carry that on to the rest of the year. Q. Obviously 59 under any circumstances is amazing, but how much did lift, clean and place help today? PAUL GOYDOS: I think it helped a lot. I mean we've had four 59s on TOUR, and two of them have been under lift, clean and place rules. The golf course was in much better shape. I was actually -- I woke up this morning, and I was in the second group. I think that helped. If I'm in the last group of the morning and the greens have gotten a little more chewed up, it's going to be harder, too. You know, I was actually thinking we might not play. It might take them a couple hours to get the golf course playable. And the golf course was really in pretty good shape. I wouldn't -- I never drove it and got to move it. I never really had any mud on my ball. I bet you -- our rules say you get to place the ball within a club length no nearer to the hole. I bet you I placed it within an inch of where it lied just about every time. The golf course is in great shape. Just they have casual water problems, and the rules officials are better at answering why we played the ball, the reasons for doing what they do. It was almost a point to where we didn't need to, which is actually a credit to the superintendent and staff the work they did to have this golf course in the shape it was in, prior to yesterday's storm. And again, they must have worked all night last night -- I can't imagine they didn't -- to get the golf course in the shape it was today. The golf course was basically in perfect condition. Did I answer your question? I tend to get a little bit long-winded at times. Q. We appreciate that sometimes. Paul, I'm giving you a telephonic high-five for that. That's pretty special. Way to go. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. I've been deputized by the AP. They would like you to go through your yardages and clubs on all 18 holes, if you could. We haven't seen that anywhere yet. PAUL GOYDOS: Okay. MARK STEVENS: It's on the end of the transcript. Q. Paul, real quick, for those of us who didn't see it on the final putt, that 7-footer and everything, what kind of putt was that? Was there any break to it? PAUL GOYDOS: It was downhill left edge. If I have a putt to win a tournament, to shoot 59, to do something special, I'd much rather have a downhiller. It was downhill, seven, seven and a half feet and probably aimed it left edge or something in that area. And again, as nervous as I've been over a putt probably in my life, and the putt couldn't have gone in the center any more square had a laser been going on it. Q. And who's your caddie today? PAUL GOYDOS: Chris Mazziotti. Q. How do you spell that? PAUL GOYDOS: M-A-Z-Z-I-O-T-T-I. Q. And you mentioned something three holes to go, you knew you needed three birdies. Were you and Chris -- you know the baseball's player old myth about don't talk about a no-hitter when it's going, but were you and Chris actually having conversations about what you needed to do to get to that number? PAUL GOYDOS: No. No. That's a different type of relationship. That wouldn't be something that the caddie -- the caddie is not going to bring it up. Q. Well, I mean did you talk to him about it? PAUL GOYDOS: No, I didn't. That's more of my own personal ideas of what I want to do. The reality is on every shot, the last, what, nine shots, we do have -- you do want to eliminate, for lack of a better word, the outcome and just try to make a good swing or get a good shot or whatever. But as an overview side of what I need to do on these last three holes or what the opportunity is in front of me, that was definitely obviously what I was trying to do. Now, on an individual shot, which I might use my caddie help me with the yardage and clubs and whatnot, that wouldn't really enter into that conversation. I'm sure if I had mentioned it to Chris, he would have a heart attack. Q. But in your own mind, you were doing the math at times on the back 9? PAUL GOYDOS: Definitely the last three holes, yes. Q. Hey, Paul, thanks for giving us something else besides LeBron James to talk about today. Congratulations. PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you. Q. I'm curious how superstitious you are, and did you do anything differently today or did you feel any differently today or is there something that you did today perhaps that you were going to continue to do throughout the rest of this week or throughout the rest of this year? PAUL GOYDOS: To answer the question before, it looks like my round is in the transcripts, so if you do still need that, that was sent out. I'm just throwing that out there to that one question. Superstition is a very interesting word. Sports psychologists talk about being in the same routine, and I look at routine as I have a quarter and a penny in my pocket that are the birth years of my daughters. I keep all my keys and coins in my right pocket. Are those superstitions or routines? I don't know. I have the same breakfast I always have. I woke up at 4:45, so I might have been asleep for the first nine holes. But I'm sure I'll think more about that, quite frankly, tomorrow and beyond in the rounds than anything that went on today. Q. And you mentioned same breakfast you usually have. What is that? PAUL GOYDOS: I had -- what did I have? I had toast, some type of wheat toast, some fruit, and I had some bacon. I'll be honest with you, it was 6:00 in the morning or maybe 5:45. Wasn't the hungriest I've ever been in my life. It seems like this round maybe because I'm 46 now, 7:00 in the morning tee times seems a lot earlier than 7:00 used to feel. Q. And you just mentioned that you didn't really talk about the number with your caddie. How about your playing partners? Did they talk a lot to you today or did they kind of stay away from you? PAUL GOYDOS: No. We talked. We didn't talk about scoring or anything like that. Jay Byrd is -- I haven't played much golf with Cliff, but Cliff's a real good guy, and he and I are a similar age. We talked about things, just a typical round of golf. I tend to talk a little bit or make silly comments or tell jokes or whatever. That's kind of my personality. And that was pretty much normal as you would see. We had a good time. They played well, too. Jay Byrd shot, I want to say, 66 and Cliff Kresge shot 67, which to be honest with you, in the shadow of a 59 is pretty good playing. Q. And Paul, one last question for you. You mentioned six balls you used today, you already gave two away and that leaves four. You talked about that sports bar in Long Beach that has some stuff of yours. Are you going to give one of the balls to them? PAUL GOYDOS: I might. I don't know. My caddie might have already given them -- he's got them right now, quite frankly. But I've got one I'm going to have myself, the one I putted out on 18. I've got one I signed that I think is going to go to the PGA TOUR, they're going to go to the Hall of Fame. Hey, I'm in the Hall of Fame, first time. And honestly, I haven't put much thought into it. I'm going to take them out of the bag. I think I should just leave them in the bag and keep them and see what happens. Q. Thanks, Paul. OPERATOR: There are currently no additional questions waiting from the phone line. MARK STEVENS: Actually, Paul has to get running. We thank everybody for their time, and just email me or call me if you have any other questions or need anything. Thank you very much. End of FastScripts |
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