Q. Use 12 as an example, but I wonder if you could talk about the penalty missing the green with the way the rough is around it. The penalty of the rough around the green. The disadvantage of missing the green.
WENDY WARD: Oh, I see what you are saying now. I thought you were saying I had incurred a penalty there. I actually had a good chip there, hit it to about 12 feet and saved par. To me, you can't afford to miss it off the tee. Around the green you might draw a decent lie or at least be able to roll in a 12-footer, but I had a couple times -- like number 1 today, I only had 112 to the front of the green and 130 to the pin, and I looked at my caddy and said give me my lob wedge, I have got to chip out 15 yards here.
Q. Was that an easy chip out, by the way?
WENDY WARD: No, it wasn't. I actually had to go out sideways to the fairway because otherwise I had I would have had to carry the rough, and I didn't know if I could carry it, you know, even with a wedge.
So when you get a tough lie, you have kind of got to take your poison and just, you know, bail out and hope for an up and down from the fairway.
Q. What were you debating on the last hole?
WENDY WARD: That was almost as bad as my lie on 1. And I said -- I looked at my caddy and I said -- we had -- you know, it wasn't a matter of going for the green or anything. And I said, "How far over the creek?" I mean, that's usually not an issue, you are usually just trying to lay up to your favorite number. And he said 100 yards. And I even said to Annika, I hit a 9-iron over the green, and I said to her, "You know, most times you don't think about a 9-iron being enough to carry 100 yards," and she laughed at me, and she said "Yeah, it's a gamble right now."
Q. Did you almost change your club?
WENDY WARD: Yeah, I asked my caddy one more time, I said, "Bill, what would we have if we laid up short?" And he said -- there was a 206 sprinkler head to the front, and the pin was on about 25, and I thought, I don't really like that alternative. So I went ahead and -- I took a gamble there, definitely.
Q. What did you have left there?
WENDY WARD: 150. Yeah, I had about 1 -- 127 to the front, 150 to the hole.
Q. Three years ago you made a lot of fans here for being honest enough to take that penalty run in the last round, missing the playoff by one. Do you remember that and what do you recall?
WENDY WARD: Do you think I remember it? I remember it, I just don't dwell on it. If it happened again, I would obviously call the penalty again, but it just makes me that much hungrier to get it done this time.
Q. Wendy, it looked like one of the keys to being where you are was some of the great pars you made out of terrible rough lies and deep stuff off the fairway when you missed.
WENDY WARD: Yeah. I try not to eat scrambled eggs too often in the morning because my caddy accuses me of that affecting me to be a scrambler. That's just part of my game. I mean, in majors you have got to make par-saving -- I mean, sometimes your par saves are better than some of your birdies and, to me, those of are your momentum holes when you can save par out of a bad drive or a poor approach shot.
Q. Was it on the fourth hole when your ball was down deep?
WENDY WARD: Yeah, I actually made birdie. Inkster, she is always teasing me. She had seen where I was on my drive, and she looked at me like, you got it from there to there and made birdie? She says, "You are good."
Q. How sloppy was it for you out there?
WENDY WARD: It's wet. I mean, there was no way in the world we could have played yesterday. There were greens out there today that were almost casual water, and I know the superintendent and his crew worked all night. So like I said, took a pair of pants here, maybe a pair of shoes, it's messy and it's going to be a little bit better tomorrow except we are going to have the afternoon wave and greens are going to be a little bumpier.
Q. When the course is playing like this, after you had such a great start and then you had two bogeys in a row, would it be easy to let the round get away from you at that point?
WENDY WARD: I don't think so because bogeys aren't going to hurt you out here, it's when you make big numbers, you make some doubles. That's hard to come back from. A bogey, you are going to throw an occasional birdie in there, those don't really upset me too much, especially the smart way that I made bogey, and I almost made par out on number 1.
Q. Would you refresh our memory about three years ago, what happened?
WENDY WARD: I don't think we need to refresh. I think everybody knows what happened. Like I said before, we have already actually talked about that and I said I just use that as a motivator to finish the job this time.
Q. When you are out there on Thursday and you have got a really decent-sized gallery, which is not always the case, depending on who you are with, do you find that helps you in terms of focusing you in or just really getting you into the tournament fast?
WENDY WARD: For me personally, yes. That's usually my downfall is not being focused enough, and I definitely was on cue, you know, starting off on that first tee. It was almost like having your Sunday final group pairing. But that -- you know, history shows for me that that's when I play my best golf, so that's where I kind of almost fall into a comfort zone there, even though my heart is racing and, you know, you got all sorts of energy going.
As long as you can contain it and use it to your advantage, that's what I tried to do today.
Q. How does Annika seem to handle all that? Obviously, you got people screaming her name every 50 yards. Is she just totally zoned in out there?
WENDY WARD: Yeah. One of the girls -- I think on number 12, our third hole, there was a little girl that said "Way to go, Annika," and it just made her smile. She looked over and said "That was really cool." I am sure she uses it to her advantage, as well.
End of FastScripts....
