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BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 2, 2014Geoff OgilvyRENO, NEVADA THE MODERATOR: Geoff Ogilvy, thanks for joining us for a few minutes. 12 points today. Gives you 35 through 54 holes and a three‑point lead heading into tomorrow's final round. With that said, some comments on‑‑ obviously the format suits you well, the course suits you well, and with that I'll just turn it over to you for a few comments. GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, I played quite well today. Birdied the par 5s I needed to birdie, which is ante in this format, because birdies are so much better than bogeys are bad. So it's definitely a format that rewards the guy that makes a lot of birdies. I don't know, I had six or seven, seven maybe, so that's always good in this format. So I put some points on the board, which you have to, because there was some low ones this morning, it looked like, or some high ones, however you want to put it. So it was nice to play well. Always fun to play with Nick. He's surely one of the nicest people in the world, and obviously a pretty quality player. So it was nice to play with Nick and make a few birdies and give myself a chance at tomorrow. Q. You made a couple of good saves. I'm not sure which holes, but could you go over those two holes. I know one was a left‑to‑right putt that was 15, 20feet to save par. GEOFF OGILVY: The two, probably 10, 11, 12. 12 I drove into the rough, hit it in the green side bunk, hit it out to about 12feet, made it, a putt breaking right‑to‑left. That was a nice one. Then I guess it's 15, ‑‑ I keep thinking of that as 6 because the first few times I played this course it was a 6 hole. But anyway, 15 I completely bladed my second shot over the back from not very far away and hit a pretty poor chip probably 25feet. I don't know. Shot link will tell you what it was. But I made a pretty‑‑ that was a bonus. I hadn't really‑‑ I mean, I was trying to make it, but it's not the sort of putt you're expecting to make. I was just trying to roll it down close and not have a complete disaster. And it went in, which was nice. Then I birdied 7, which is a good birdie because that's a really tricky hole‑‑ 16, because that's a really tricky hole. So two good saves, nice to keep sort of going along nicely. Makes a difference when you hole a couple of big par putts. Q. Looked like on 17 neither of you wanted to get any points on that hole because you both had some good opportunities going into the green but didn't hit good approach shots going in. GEOFF OGILVY: I mean, you can't‑‑ it's impossible to describe to people how hard it is to hit a green from 130 yards away on that hole. Like it's gotta be the hardest wedge in the world ever. Like I could hit the same shot I hit ten times and it could go short five times and over the back five times. The shot I hit, I was posing on. I thought I hit it stiff. And it bounced 25feet short and takes two bounces. It wasn't even close to staying on the green. And then Nick, coming out of the rough, he had a really, really tough shot. I mean, I would actually go as far to say they were two of the toughest shots we faced all day, the second shot on the 17. It's hard to describe how hard that is. It's blowing really hard. You're at altitude. It's downhill a lot more than it looks. The green is very firm. So it does seem like we had a chance. I guess anytime you get a wedge in your hand you get a chance. But it's also‑‑ neither of us would have been disappointed to make a par there, I don't think. But we both made bogey in the end. Q. I'm doing something on kind of the cut line here. Both last year and this year a guy who barely made the cut line finished second last year, kind of tickled the leaderboard today. Can you see a situation maybe where they expand the cut here because of the Stableford? GEOFF OGILVY: No, I can't. I mean, there's not a week out here anymore, really, that guys who missed the cut by a shot weren't still kind of in the tournament to win it. Almost every week it's only seven or eight or nine shots from cut line to leader. And nine shots with two rounds, that guy can win anywhere. That being said, this format, you can make massive charges in one day, if you go and throw a couple of eagles and a few birdies. Like Steve Lowery‑‑ we're going back a long time‑‑ at Denver, having an albatross on the second to last hole for eight points, coming out of nowhere, nearly beating Rich Beem. You can come from a long way back in this format. But tomorrow, for example, if we had a bigger cut tomorrow, you couldn't do the two tee start for the weather thing. And logistically it doesn't work out. It would be nice if everyone‑‑ if you could cut to 100 or something here, because you can really be 30 points after two rounds and probably have a chance. But logistically it doesn't work. Q. That's been a common reaction from some of the guys. And I'm curious, why wouldn't all the players kind of want more guys to get a chance to make a check, or is it just simply a logistics thing? GEOFF OGILVY: We do. I mean, nobody likes missing cuts. But it's purely logistic. Without getting too technical, 78 players is half of a normal field, which is what we play every Thursday and Friday. And that is a massive‑‑ that's too many people on the course anyway.  That's 27 groups. Only 18 holes. So you just start running out of room. It's like the 405. There's only a certain number of cars you can fit on it. The conversation constantly on TOUR, we need more guys to make the cut; it's not fair if you miss a cut if you're seven shots behind, eight shots behind, nine shots behind. The reality is you can't fit that many people on a golf course. The standard, I'm sure 40, 50, 60, quite a big gap between the cut line and leader, because it probably wasn't the top guys are as good, but probably dropped off a bit quicker. There's not a player out here who isn't a good player now. There's just so many guys with a chance every week that if you cut back to the point where guys thought they'd have a chance, like the 10‑shot rule, for example, some weeks we'd have 115 guys making the cut, you just couldn't play. There's just not enough hours in the day or holes on the course. So we all love the idea of it, but I think the reality it doesn't work. It's purely a logistics issue, I think. Q. Good time to be playing very well with the FedExCup, I know that's probably on your mind. Do you feel like something's been clinched today, or how do you feel heading into as we get very, very close to that? GEOFF OGILVY: I don't really think about it, to be honest with you. I thought I was thinking about it a bit earlier in the year because I was struggling, I was way back on the list, and thinking about it doesn't really help you play very well, usually. I'm glad I've got a chance. I wasn't even going to come, actually, after Canada. Long trip home from Canada, took 14 hours to get home from Canada, as it does from the East Coast to the West Coast. I got home and I'm I really don't want to go this week. I was looking for every excuse in the world not to play because I wanted to have a week off. But everyone convinced me it was a good idea. Obviously it was a pretty good idea. So I'm just glad I've got a chance tomorrow. I like the format. I like the course. So I'm just glad I got a chance, really, to win a golf tournament. And winning golf tournaments is fun. Hopefully I can go out and play well. Q. With the format and all that, what are your thoughts on tomorrow? Do you go out aggressively? Do you do anything differently than you would in normal stroke play? GEOFF OGILVY: Well, the normal stroke play, maybe. This format does suit aggression a little bit. You can have a good day even with a few bogeys in this format. You're better off to have five birdies and five bogeys than you are have 18 pars. So if you play pretty normal golf, I think, but if there's a decision between aggression, not aggression, I think it's worth taking the aggressive tact in this format because the rewards are so great for birdies and eagles. And it's nice to have a three‑point lead. Three points is not very much. There's four par 5s. They're all reachable for everyone. There's a couple par 4s that can be potentially be driven by guys. Lots of eagles and birdies out there. As we see, John had 19 points today, did he? Won a car, did I hear as well? Pretty good day. That's a pretty good day. Someone can have 20 points. So that means I still have to score a bunch of points just to stay in front of the guys who are close. So I just go out and play as well as I can. Hopefully it goes well. Q. You mentioned being a little bit frustrated in Canada and then having kind of a rough stretch around the time of the U.S. Open back in June and tournaments leading up to that. In the big picture, what have you been working on as a whole with your game to get to where you are now? GEOFF OGILVY: The best thing I did was take three weeks off after Congressional. I mean, I hit the ball so well at Congressional, it's incredible. I couldn't touch the hole from three feet all week. It was really frustrating. I wasn't in the Open. I took three weeks off. I just wanted to come back out here again, which was good. I've been workingon not working on it too much, if you know what I mean. I think about stuff a bit too much when I start, I camp on the range, on the putting green, I start analyzing a little bit too much. And I definitely play better when I don't analyze it. I think most people probably do. I took a bit of time off and refreshed and just played a few fun rounds of golf, stayed away from the range and the putting green and just tried to hit good shots again, if that makes sense, without actually getting too technical about it. So that's all I really did. I was pretty over it kind of just after the U.S. Open, especially at the U.S. Open, I was pretty over it. Again, I hit the ball really well there. I just didn't get anything out of it. I felt that the only thing it could have been really was I was a bit stale, just a bit over‑‑ I just needed to take a breath and take a few weeks off and want to come back. I spent three weeks on a beach in San Diego, played really well in Canada last week. I just, again, didn't make very many putts. And this week I'm playing similar. I just made a few putts. And you hear it from every golfer on TOUR when they are making putts, golf goes quite well. So hopefully I can make a few more tomorrow. Q. Have you tried this kind of philosophy in the past, kind of this hands‑off approach? GEOFF OGILVY: I have a hard time doing it. Most of us do. We all get the guilts when we go home and don't like wake up in the morning, go to the range or the golf course. It's difficult. I looked at my career just basically, and I had always done very well on the West Coast. And I've very often done well in my first tournament of the year, after three or four weeks off. So I decided that that probably isn't a coincidence, that perhaps not the not being on the golf course every day, but not being out here every day, it just refreshes, makes you want to come out here, take a month off TOUR: I gotta go back, do what I do, let's go play golf, get excited about it again. That's probably all it is. Maybe going forward I just gotta make sure I put appropriate breaks in my schedule and when I take a break, take a break, not take a break on the range at home, just take a proper break, which is what I just did. So maybe it's a coincidence, but it will definitely be a part of my future planning. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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