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October 9, 2014
NAPA, CALIFORNIA
Q.  Nicely done out there. Maybe not your best ball‑striking day, but you got around the course really well, five birdies, 3‑under par 69.
STUART APPLEBY: You do have to drive it well here. That's something that's probably not the strongest point of my game. If you hit it crooked and long, that's great. I'm not either; I'm crooked and short. I think that's critical around here four days. I think you can get away with it now and then. Ball‑striking is important. The greens are pretty fast and pretty firm at times, depending on where those pins are. I think a real ball‑striking course, but if you can manage to get four, five, six birdies a day you can sort of get away and hide a few things.  But good step.
Q. Kind of an old‑school golf course, you like that look?
STUART APPLEBY: It's fantastic old‑school. You've got to put yourself on the right side of the tee just to miss a tree 50 or 100 yards in front of you. That's unusual that you've got to sort of line yourself up to slip it down the middle. But good aggressive bunkering you can see plays a role; big, deep bunkers in spots. Bunker sand varies, so you've got to watch which sand is okay to get in or not. And it's bouncy. I hit a full lobby on the last from probably 85, 90 yards, and it kicked five yards forward on a flat green. Once the ball starts doing that, it just becomes harder to really control what is happening with the bounces.
Q. As we start this new season, what are your thoughts about going into this year?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, I'm in this year but I'm going into next year. It's still weird to wrap your head around it's already a new year and Santa hasn't even come yet. I've just had a month off. I don't know what happened to it, where it went. I didn't get a huge amount of practice in. I spent a lot of time just‑‑ Groundhog Day it felt like for a month. But I'm really looking forward to playing the next handful of events and then head over‑‑ this will be four in a row for me, and then maybe head to Australia to play a couple of events, catch up with family. But get into the first part of this new season and then get into it again, full gear into it in 2015.
Q. Obviously up here in wine country. Have you been able to get to a few vineyards yet?
STUART APPLEBY: No, no. I mean, this is so tempting. The weather is unbelievable. It won't be long before the East Coast is a mess with weather, and here we are, it's fantastic, wine everywhere, and I've been a really good boy. I guess a lot of it is maybe spending time on the range. But it reminds me a lot of Australia, this climate, some of the areas, the most like Australia by far in the U.S.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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