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BMW CHAMPIONSHIP

September 3, 2014

Hunter Mahan

CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE, COLORADO

JOHN BUSH: We would like to welcome Hunter Mahan to the interview room. He's making his 12th start at the BMW Championship with a tie for fourth last year his best finish. Hunter, if we can just get some comments on being back at the BMW.

HUNTER MAHAN: Yeah, always feels good to be at the BMW and the third leg of the FedExCup. And it's a new place for all the players here, so I think we have got some -- we're all trying to figure it out and trying to figure out the altitude a little bit. So, a lot to learn this week, but it's a great course, great venue, and I know everyone's been treated extremely well here.

JOHN BUSH: You're currently number 3 in the FedExCup, so I know this is big week. You would love to stay in that top-5.

HUNTER MAHAN: Exactly, that's kind of a goal of probably all the top-10, top-15 players are probably trying to stay in the Top-5. So, you know what you have to do next week to win the FedExCup, but a lot of golf to be played and looking forward to this week.

JOHN BUSH: Open it up to questions.

Q. Were you here when you got the call that you were on the team?
HUNTER MAHAN: Yeah, I just landed. I got texted from Tom telling me to call him. And I did. And it was nice, because he said when I called him he said, is this the Ryder Cup player on the phone? And I said, well is it? I sure hope it is. It was nice to kind of break the ice and just get it over with. You don't want to -- so it was a great feeling. Yeah, it was really nice.

Q. Did you have a feeling one way or the other when you called him?
HUNTER MAHAN: Yeah, I mean I felt pretty good about my position. The way I played at the PGA and then winning Barclays. I felt like I had a good opportunity and a good chance. So, winning when I did cured a lot of things.

Q. How did you celebrate?
HUNTER MAHAN: I haven't yet. I've just been celebrating in my mind. I haven't done much. Going to wait until I get home. But it's exciting. The Ryder Cup is something that everyone wants to think about at the beginning of the year. You know, it's a Ryder Cup year, everyone's already talking about it, and it's kind of sliding in at the last second there and get a spot, it was a great feeling.

Q. Is it awkward at all, finding out early in the day and kind of walking around amongst players and amongst everyone kind of, I know something you don't know, or how aware is everybody else of what's going on?
HUNTER MAHAN: Well, there's, you know, the caddies are got quite a bit of gossip. So, once one person knows, another and another. But the media was super respectful of the process and what was going to happen and they didn't bothered anyone. And they just kind of let everything play out. I mean, I didn't know who the whole three were for most of the day. So, it was a pretty well kept secret, and it was pretty neat how they kind of introduced everybody, kind of in the fashion that they did.

Q. When was the last time that you had a situation like that? I'm thinking this is like a high school kid waiting to find out if he made the baseball team or the basketball team. It's an interesting predicament you were in. What did it feel like and have you ever had an experience like that before, you were waiting to find out if you made something like that?
HUNTER MAHAN: Well, in 2012 I just slipped out at the last second there and got out of the 8th spot and finished 9th and wasn't playing well. So, I didn't have a great feeling about it. I didn't really think I was going to be a pick. Because a couple other guys were playing really, really good golf. It's just nerve wracking. You feel very helpless in a sense, because you just have no information. You have no idea what anyone's thinking. I mean, you're just kind of waiting. It's kind of an un-nerving feeling. Then, you feel like a lot of pressure is on yourself and just like, you know, there's a lot of scenarios running through your head. So, when you finally get your clear cut answer it's very relieving and it's -- for it to go this way for me, it feels very good. I know all three of us have very, very excited, and we're amped up for the opportunity to go to Scotland.

Q. What are your thoughts on the course? Does it fit your game pretty well? It's not exactly a bombers paradise here. It's a little cozier than some of the big broad shouldered courses you guys see.
HUNTER MAHAN: Yeah, it's, being at altitude it's really not a very long golf course. The rough is thick. It's pretty heavy on the fairways and off the greens. The greens are just fantastic. They're rolling at a great speed. They have got some great slope to them. So, you have to be very careful where you leave your approach shots. You can leave yourself very, very difficult chips all day. There's a lot of different ways you can play this golf course. You can be aggressive off the tee and challenge some tee shots and challenge bunkers and then you can play very safe. So I don't think it really suits anybody's game. I think anybody can win. A bomber like Rory or a guy like Tim Clark, who can just hit fairways and greens and roll in some putts. So I think that this is going to be one of those tournaments where there's going to be a lot of really good rounds and going into Sunday even the back nine you never know what could happen.

Q. Are you hitting drivers on 1 and 3?
HUNTER MAHAN: Yes. Driver is a strength, so I'm going to pull it as much as I can.

Q. All the proceeds in this are going to that Evans Scholars Foundation, I believe you had an ace last year you put this girl through college who is a local caddie here. What does it mean for you to do something like that and have you talked to this girl?
HUNTER MAHAN: Yeah, having the approach shots last year was really neat. Obviously making an ace is pretty awesome. Winning the car that i3 was incredible. I mean, I've never, you see guys do that and they jump on the car and have big celebrations and that, and to win a car is really cool. I saw it two weeks ago at Barclays. And I got to meet the Evans Scholarship winner and then the fact that she's going to go to the Boulder and go to Colorado and get four years of college and housing paid for, it's just amazing. It's just an incredible offering by BMW to do that. The Evans Scholarship Foundation, I was just looking at that, they had a board of all the kids that are in the program and then the alumni and there's some really outstanding people a part of that. So it's a really neat thing. I think caddies at clubs are really special and really neat and I think they're kind of -- I don't know how many clubs have caddies, but I think that it's underused and I think there's a lot of cool avenues that you can use for these caddies and it's great networking for them and when you have a great program like the Evans Scholarship Foundation, I mean, it's changing a lives. So it's very, very neat to be a part of.

Q. With the climate being a lot dryer here, do you change your hydration strategy coming here?
HUNTER MAHAN: I think you're more cognizant of it. And you have to be on top of it. Because this is our third leg of an of a four week stretch here. We have got the Ryder Cup in a few weeks, too. There's a week off in between there, but a week off really isn't a week off. So, it's an extremely important thing to take care of yourself this week, physically, and to make sure that by Sunday you're going to still feel pretty good and you're still going to have good energy for this week and next week and the Ryder Cup. So taking care of yourself this week is extremely important. This course isn't big in a sense of walks between holes and where you have to walk, it's pretty short and tight. But there's some good hills and you got to be playing midday kind of every day. Luckily the temperature is going to be okay for us. But that's kind of a, that's a trick that they're going to play on you, it's only going to be 75, but the altitude, it will get you. So you got to be very aware of taking care of yourself this week.

Q. I know the Match Play is played at a pretty significant altitude as well and so I'm curious, obviously, you're pretty familiar or pretty comfortable playing at altitude. But how do those two courses compare?
HUNTER MAHAN: Well, the courses really don't compare. The altitude kind of does and how the ball's going to fly. I think that the temperature's kind of going down are going to take a little bit of jump off the ball a little bit. If it was going to be in the 90s to 95 all week, the ball would be really jumping. A lot of iron shots. Especially short irons that get up in the air. So, we're doing a lot of charting every single shot, figuring how far the ball's flying on each shot. Releasing, the greens were a lot firmer today than they were yesterday. So you just have to be super aware and super understanding where the pins are and where we want to leave ourselves and you can't really hit it over these greens. You're just not going to have much of a chip left. So, everyone's going to be doing a lot of homework kind of into each shot and making sure that whatever club you pull, you're pretty confident in what you're going to get when you hit it.

JOHN BUSH: Hunter Mahan, thank you, sir.

HUNTER MAHAN: You got it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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