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CHRYSLER CHAMPIONSHIP

October 28, 2004

Kirk Triplett

PALM HARBOR, FLORIDA

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Kirk Triplett, thanks for joining us. Great start to your week, first round 64, two shots out of the lead. If you could talk about your day today. Conditions must have been pretty favorable for scoring, a lot of low scores out there, and yours was one of them.

KIRK TRIPLETT: I haven't played here since they played the JC Penney tournament here, and we shot pretty good scores at that. Then I've been watching the last couple of years, and this golf course has been tough, real tough. Even the first couple days in the practice round, I was kind of thinking if you shot under par, you were playing pretty well, and I still think that. But I think for some reason the ball was going a little farther today, not much wind, and the greens are a little receptive, probably just softer overall than it has been.

For me, I birdied six out of my first eight holes before I even kind of woke up (laughter). You hope to turn it into a really good round when you get going that fast, but I just played solid.

Q. What do you mean woke up? Didn't you play in the afternoon?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, but you know what I'm saying. You get out there, you get playing, birdie, birdie, birdie, make a couple pars, birdie, birdie, birdie, and boom, you're 6-under, but it doesn't seem to take that long.

Q. I don't know what you're talking about personally.

KIRK TRIPLETT: You get in that little twilight zone there for a few holes and making a few putts, and it seems pretty easy and you're not pressing, and all of a sudden you're in that good round territory.

Q. Who did you play with in the Penney?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I play with a gal named Maggie Will and Julie Larson and then Julie Pierce because she got married, so we never did real well, but I think we finished maybe 8th one year. I always enjoyed the tournament, though.

Q. Are you saying you haven't been back since?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, they've only played here, what, four or five years?

Q. Yeah, The Presidents Cup one year.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, and this has been opposite other events a couple times. I would have been here last year but I made some money at Disney so I was sure I was going to be in the Top 30 and I wanted to rest up for that.

Q. Is there anything at all from JC Penney experiences that benefits you now, or are the formats just different and the golf course is different?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I know to stay off Highway 19 if at all possible (laughter). You know the layout of the course and the shots you're looking at hitting. I didn't remember it being such a difficult driving course. I think maybe at that point of the year we didn't have as much rough, but I also got to play my partner's ball, and she usually drove it in the fairway.

Q. The immediate reaction would be this would be a long driver's course, 7,300 yards, par 71, but apparently that is not necessarily correct.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, absolutely not. A long driver's course is a course that's wide open where no matter where you hit it, you've got a good next shot. This course, a lot of the fairways pinch in, especially on the par 5s. Those par 5s are all 560, 590, 575 if I'm not mistaken, and for the longer hitters, those holes are reachable. But I'll tell you what, you've got to hit a great drive to get it in the fairway and be able to reach those par 5s, so it's really kind of more a wedge players' contest than the guys that hit it out there and put it consistently in the fairway.

You look at probably the results over the years, I pay attention to this stuff when I'm at home, I've recognized over the years that this is a good golf course for someone who can drive the ball straight, K.J. Choi winning, Retief Goosen winning, John Huston winning; they drive their ball very, very well and they play well on tough golf courses.

Length is not near the advantage here that say Jackson, Mississippi, or Las Vegas or someplace like that. So it's not the length of the course, it's more the severity of the -- the narrowness of the fairways. Does that make sense? I'm confusing myself.

Q. You probably get a sense that it was tougher than you remembered during the practice round I take it?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, we used to play that format where you both drive and hit each other's shot maybe, and then they switched it over to the best ball, and when they switched it to the best ball, we all of a sudden played the back tees on every hole, which we didn't do for that alternate shot format. So the last year or two of that tournament, yeah, I got a much better feel for how difficult this golf course is, and it seems to me they've extended it even since then.

Q. What did think when you saw Sluman's 62 out there before you started?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I kind of thought yesterday playing in the Pro-Am that 3- or 4-under would be a pretty good score, and I'm very surprised how good the scores were. It's probably a testament to how good the greens are. I mean, they're perfect, in perfect shape, and they're receptive. You can hit a 4- or 5-iron in there and know that it's going to stop within 10 or 15 feet of where it lands if you hit it from the fairway.

Q. Are you paying a lot of attention to the Money List and getting to 40 and getting to 30 and what the numbers are?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, it's easy for me. I've got to finish 1st or 2nd to get in the Top 30. That's the only reason I'm here, because I want to go to the Tour Championship and I want to go to Kapalua next year. I haven't gotten to go to those very often, and I sure like them.

Q. What's your status on Augusta right now?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I am exempt from -- I played last year. But yes, I would be thinking about that, as well, so I can go and get me a shirt like Doug's got.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: If we could go through your round quickly and we'll take one or two last questions. You started out with three birdies to start your round.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Hit it right next to the green in 2 into the greenside bunker and had a sand wedge out about two feet, made birdie.

Hit a 7-iron about five feet on No. 2.

Hit a 7-iron about 15 feet on No. 3. You're going to look all these up on ShotLink and my numbers are going to be off.

Q. What makes you think ShotLink has got it right?

KIRK TRIPLETT: It's lasers, man, science. It's got to be right.

Q. It's people running them, though.

KIRK TRIPLETT: That's true.

Made a nice save on 5, hit it over the green there and had a nasty lie, just two or three yards off the green but made a nice pitch, just kind of closed my eyes and swung at it and it came out nice. For a West Coast guy, here in Florida, there's no technique. We just close our eyes and swing.

Hit driver and 8-iron on 6 to about ten feet.

Hit a pitching wedge on 7 about eight feet.

Hit a 3-iron about 30 feet on No. 8 and made that. I was feeling pretty good right then.

Only bogey of the day, drove it in the rough on 9 just short of the bunker, hit it out to 100 yards and then ended up short of the green again and got that up-and-down for a 5.

Then 11, hit a 3-wood on the green for my second shot on 11, two-putted from 60 feet.

Hit a pitching wedge on 14 and made about a ten-footer.

Q. You've got guys that are always looking at the different bubbles this week. I'm just curious, aside from winning, what motivates you at the start of each year, not at the end of it?

KIRK TRIPLETT: At the start, probably fear (laughter). You know, trying to just get another year.

Q. For even you?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, that's a good -- respect. Fear may be the wrong word, but respect, knowing that if -- I've got to continue to devote the right amount of time to what I'm doing, and if I do that, it'll work out.

Q. Do you go into each year not completely certain or having that little --

KIRK TRIPLETT: I try not to take it for granted. It's sort of a plan thing. It's not -- it doesn't keep me up at night. I mean, when the thought pops into my head, I just say, hey, you can't do anything about that now, just go out, do your practice, play. Now, when it takes $600,000 to keep your card and you're out there the first week or two of the season, you know, that seems like a huge number to have to make because in my mind, you still get paid on like early year dollars. You still make $129,000 for 2nd instead of $550,000.

Q. Do you think that way because you're not as young as you used to be?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I know what I want to do. I want to play four or five more years and play the same schedule I've always played and be successful and be competitive. That's what I've done for the last 15, so I'm not going to walk around saying, aw, it's a piece of cake. I just try and show it the respect it deserves.

Q. I thought you made one of the great philosophical points at Wachovia. You said, "I know how to get guys out." You're referring to yourself.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Right, and that's what I'm talking about right now. If I give it the respect it deserves by practicing, doing my work, not trying to reinvent the wheel, playing the game my way, all right, that's what I'm talking about, knowing how to get guys out. I know how to do that, and if I do it, then things are going to work out fine. Do you understand?

Q. Yeah.

KIRK TRIPLETT: So it's kind of an extension of that.

Q. But it starts with not taking it for granted it sounds like.

KIRK TRIPLETT: That's right, because I've seen guys take it for granted. I've also seen guys say, "I've had enough, I played bad, and I don't want to be out here." Well, the minute you say that, you're not out here. We've all said it, but some guys let it really creep in, and I try to make an effort not to because once you're off -- it's a lot easier to stay on when you're on than it is to get back on when you're off.

Q. When was the last time you were off, 15 years?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah. I've had a nice run.

Q. Do you think Vijay takes it for granted?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I don't think so because he was out there on the range after the Pro-Am for like five hours. For him maybe that is taking it for granted. Maybe it would have been seven (laughter).

There's a direct correlation there, don't you think? I mean, he's got his routine dialed in, he does what he wants to do, and he knows if he does that, he's going to win golf tournaments.

I know if I do what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to be competitive. I'm not going to win seven, eight tournaments, I mean, I haven't, so there's no reason for me to think that I'm going to by practicing the way I did --

Q. That's what Sutton said when he got it back at the back end of his career, that he was afraid to keep his hands off the club for more than three days at a time.

KIRK TRIPLETT: For me when I spend too much time practicing and too much time worrying about it and too much time working on it, I keep adding stuff to my game, extra stuff, and that's when I get in trouble. That's when I have trouble playing.

For me it's got to be two weeks, clubs in the closet, no playing, nothing. Then when I start over, I start with the two or three things that made me successful. "Oh, there it is, you big dummy." That approach has worked for me. That's my personality, that's the way I am. It's made me reasonably consistent. Some people would say it's a copout, you don't work hard enough, don't want to be No. 1 in the world. You know, I've gone through stages where I've tried to increase it, and the more effort I apply, kind of the worse it got.

I've got my level, and if I do it right, I can take advantage of it.

Q. When Tiger was playing his best, we could have a day like today when Sluman is 9-under and Tiger might be 4-under and a bunch of other guys would be 4-under, but everybody would notice that Tiger was 4-under. Has Vijay gotten to that spot where everybody notices where he is? He shoots 65 today, not close to the lead, but is everybody paying attention to where Vijay is now?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Everybody knows exactly where Vijay is now. Yep, there's no question, no question. You hear it on the putting green. "Vijay is chopping today; he's 4-under through 14" (laughter). No, you hear the same comments now about Vijay that you used to hear about Tiger. And you still hear them about Tiger when he plays. That's the amazing thing is the guy hasn't played his best golf for the last -- you guys put a number on it, I don't know what it is, two years, a year and a half, but when he's around within eight or ten, we know where he is. We know right where he is. We wish you guys would quit kicking him and prodding him. Let him sleep, lay down. Quit poking him.

Yeah, those are two guys. I don't think you just reserve it for those two guys, either. You know where Ernie Els is at, and there's certain guys who are great front-runners. You know where they're at, too.

Q. You said you hadn't hung out with Vijay on the range lately, but have you played with him?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I haven't played with Vijay in a long time. Our pairings seem to have been -- he's in that winner's category, although I've snuck in there this last year or so, but it's -- just watching him hit some balls yesterday, it's impressive. He was hitting some balls with Paul Azinger and I was right next to him. He knows what he's doing.

Q. Are you going to get the shaft and stick it in the ground and get the water bottle?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Not in public, no. Maybe at my home course.

Q. Speaking of Azinger, what do you think of his future in the ABC tower?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I don't know anything about it. Is he the new guy? Well, congratulations. Yeah, he'll do fine. He'll do very well.

Q. You didn't think we were going to get this deep when you came in here, did you?

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, but I like it. I come in here because it means you're playing good. If you're coming in here and you're not having any fun in here, what's the deal?

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you, Kirk.

End of FastScripts.

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