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HYUNDAI TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONSJanuary 8, 2015Matt KucharKAPALUA, HAWAII THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Matt Kuchar into the interview room. Making his sixth start at the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. Four straight Top 10 finishes. Matt, you never had your pleasure of being back in Hawaii. If we can just get some comments. MATT KUCHAR: I do love it here. It's a magical place, and coming back to Kapalua, there's something really special about playing those holes where you're looking down at Molokai in the distance. It's a special, unique place. Love coming here. I love all the islands I've been to. I really had a great experience. Hoping to put my name on this title one of these years and earn that way back really quickly. It would be nice to knock that out as soon as possible. THE MODERATOR: Couple of Top‑25 finishes to start the year and then you had a couple of nice starts there in December in Florida. Just comment a little bit on the state of your game heading into the week. MATT KUCHAR: Had two events in I don't know what you call it, the fall restart. I'm not really sure of the exact name of it. And then took a break after McGladrey. So I played Frys and McGladrey and took four weeks off and showed back up for Tiger's event first week in December. I really do wish we could flip‑flop Tiger's and shark shootout. I show up for Tiger's, and my goal is I get a break, take four weeks off, do nothing. Tiger's event, 18 guys, big purse, World Golf ranking points. You want to play well there, but I go in knowing I'm going to be rough there. I don't want to devote a week or ten days to try to get in tip‑top form. And Shark Shootout's an event where it's okay if you're not quite in tip‑top form. You've got a partner. It would be so great if they would flip‑flop them. I love playing them in that I use them as the start of my spring training. I look at the month of December as a spring training for me. Those two events kind of tell me what needs work to be done to get ready for first week in January and the start of the year. I had a couple of nice weeks in those two events, needed to kind of sharpen up some short game stuff. I got together with Chris O'Connell and find of fine‑tuned some of the swing changes. Feeling pretty good right now. I'm healthy. The game feels good. You don't really know until the gun goes off, until you actually get a tournament in, exactly how good of shape you're really in. So it feels good, but kind of never know. I think week two and three are a lot better judge, being able to tell somebody just how good of form I'm really in or not. THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll go to questions. Q. You've talked about it, you've done well here several times. What does it take to maybe hoist that trophy on Monday? MATT KUCHAR: I remember last year playing a practice round with Zach Johnson, and Zach was asking me, he goes, man, have you ever played well here? Basically leading me to know that Zach has never played well here. Kind of his game is not a great fit here. I said, yeah, Zach, I've had some decent finishes, and he was kind of surprised. I kind of got the feeling like this course didn't match out for him, that he didn't love it. But I guess I was completely wrong because he went out and won the tournament. So the point there being this course is unique in that Zach not being a long hitter, myself not being a long hitter, he can still really play well. There's a number of wedge holes here that guys like he and I need to take advantage of and can take advantage of. There's some bigger holes, I kind of get to some of the par‑5s in two. There are a couple of other would be nice to carry it a little further over some hazards. But it's great in that it sets up for both long players and short players can do well here. So there's no reason why I couldn't do well. I've had some nice results. Just haven't gotten all the way in the winner's circle just yet. Q. All right. You talked about December being your kind of spring training, so to speak. I know you said you head out to Palm Springs to do some work. MATT KUCHAR: Yeah. Q. Is that something you do every year? MATT KUCHAR: Yeah, pretty much every year. Q. Why Palm Springs? MATT KUCHAR: I try to get pretty much November completely off, try to do no golf. At least a stretch in October, November of a good four weeks completely off. And then December I do look at that as spring training. And part of that is I try to get five days a week out in Palm Springs. I know you can count on the weather being perfect out there. One, coming from the East Coast, it gets me a little more acclimated to West Coast time than Hawaii time. But I can count on having perfect conditions to practice in. So I always feel like I can really judge my game. I think sometimes you come to Hawaii and it may get blowy conditions. You could get out to a place and have four or five days of pretty strong winds where you may be more prepared to play in windy conditions, but you may not be as prepared for the rest of the year. I think in those Palm Springs‑like conditions, I feel like I can really get dialed in. And I've done that now eight or ten years and it's been a nice formula just to kind of‑‑ I set up a home base there. I leave all my cold‑weather clothes when I come out here. I leave stuff out. You always need some turtle necks and some sweaters for those early mornings in Palm Springs and Phoenix. So I kind of set up shop and []feel like I get some really good quality practice in as well as slowly adjust myself to the West Coast time. Q. When you first came here in the early two thousands, did the course look fun or look intimidating? MATT KUCHAR: Here at Kapalua? Fun. Fun. It's definitely unique. It's not like any others. The undulations here are amazing. The greens probably take the most home course knowledge of anywhere we play. There's just so much slope and so much grain that I think it takes some good getting used to of figuring out there are a handful of putts that always kind of fool me. I have to go back in the memory bank or go back to my yardage book and look at putts that have fooled me and kind of have a better knowledge now that this is my sixth tournament here. Q. Wondering, are you a team guy, and by that I guess I mean do you have a group of people that you meet with at the end of every year? MATT KUCHAR: I do not. I do not. Q. Do you find that interesting how many guys do have those? You know, Zach was in here talking about it before. MATT KUCHAR: It is amazing. And granted, good for those guys. None of us can do it by ourselves. I mean it's just‑‑ I mean Bubba is the closest. He's probably the one guy without a swing coach. But there's a team with Bubba. He's not a one‑man operation. It's a long shot from a one‑man operation there. Q. But you'd be more of a throwback, then, of a guy who basically is relying largely on yourself, and got your swing coach obviously. MATT KUCHAR: You got a swing coach and a caddie. That's kind of enough of a team there. But I don't feel like I need to get everybody together and discuss how the year went and how to work. I kind of know with my instructor where we want to go. There's just kind of an always strive to improve and we're always going in the same direction with my golf swing. So as far as trying to figure out how to get better, it's mainly just anytime I'm with him, might as well be a meeting, I guess, because we're working on those type of things, how to get better. Q. You're not necessarily meeting with anybody about this, but do you break down your stats or anything at the end of the year or do you kind of let the money list tell you how things went? MATT KUCHAR: I find it pretty basic, and I don't know if maybe I understand my game or I understand the game of golf better, but I can tell you that my putting was pretty good last year, that my‑‑ I can tell you where my weaknesses are and my strengths, and everything was kind of up there, top 20, I guess. I didn't have like a glaring weakness, I don't think. But I could tell you after this week where‑‑ I don't think I need to dive into the stats necessarily to learn that much from it. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of where I sit and how I'm doing just on my own. There's some guys that break down courses similarly with where you can and can't miss it. Like I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of that as well just by charting a yardage book. I don't need a guy to tell me that the fifth hole is a birdie hole type of thing or that you need to miss it short of the green or you can't miss it over the fifth green. Just an example, like I would know that by the pin placement and kind of looking at my yardage book. I think those kind of come a little bit more naturally to me. The stats, it seems like more and more guys are using them. They're interesting. I don't know exactly how, like if you rank low from 150 to 175 proximity to the hole, do you work on your 7‑iron. Some of the ones I just don't kind of get exactly how to make it better. You just wouldn't go spend a lot of time hitting 7‑irons, I don't think. But maybe. You know, I'm always looking to just improve in all areas. Certainly the cool thing about the game is there is no end in sight. Let's say you were great‑‑ let's say your short game is great. You wouldn't just be okay with that. You'd continue to try to make it better. There's no limit to how good your short game can be, even if you're Top 5 and scrambling, you're still going to work on it. You're still going to try to get better. So I don't‑‑ I just haven't quite had somebody tell me anything that said, oh, yeah, that makes sense. I oughta look at stats to get better. I kind of have a good feeling of it. Q. You said that you felt good coming into this week. You have some‑‑ I'm assuming some expectations, and I know that you're playing kind of a stretch of four in a row. What do you expect to see in these four weeks from your game, and what do you expect goal wise for the year? MATT KUCHAR:  It's interesting to think. I think‑‑ there are a lot of guys who make their schedules around major championships and try to build off of it. Our first one, of course, is the Masters, and try to peak at that time. I certainly would love to think that I'd try. In order to do my best at the Masters, try to do my best this week and next week and the week after and pretend that for this week, this is my Masters this week. Next week is going to be my Masters next week. You know, there's no other tournament I'd want to win right now than this tournament right now. That being said, I told you Tiger's event I didn't go in fully prepared knowing that I needed a break. I've had a couple of weeks off, even with practice. I don't know exactly how sharp I truly am. So I really like to think I don't have a whole lot of expectations week in and week out. I go in trying to do my best. I don't know that putting an expectation level like I'd like to Top 5 or I'd like to hit 75 percent of my greens. I don't have those sort of expectations, or even just in contention. I kind of take it so in the present. I just go I'm going to do my very best over this shot. I'm working on a certain thing that right now feels really good. I feel like I'm making pretty good contact. I feel like I'm pretty much pretty good control of where the ball is going. The game feels sharp. Now, granted, I told you I've had two weeks of practice. I've been at home. I did last week, I spent some time on the Big Island, and I tried to play more. I tried to not hit as many balls. I tried to have games with guys. I tried to go out and get on the golf course and tried to get the ball in the hole, hoping to let that lead over into a little bit better on‑course performance than just hitting balls. Q. How quickly does Kapalua come to mind when you get that first win? MATT KUCHAR: Typically it sits there in the back where you're so stuck in the moment of winning a PGA TOUR event that you forget for a minute. It's such a big thing to win a PGA TOUR event, that for a moment you forget and you're just so excited to have won a tournament. And for me it'll be sometime‑‑ let me give you within the hour of kind of the winning pot. You go, oh, yeah, Kapalua, that's right. It's kind of within the hour that that pops in and it's pretty exciting. THE MODERATOR: Anything else? All right. Matt, thank you very much. MATT KUCHAR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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