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RBC HERITAGEApril 15, 2015Matt KucharHILTON HEAD, SOUTH CAROLINA MARK STEVENS: We'd like to welcome our defending champion, Matt Kuchar into the interview room here at the RBC Heritage. Matt, if you kind of want to go over your thoughts coming into this year, after such an exciting win last year here at Harbour Town, and then we'll have some questions. MATT KUCHAR: It's very cool to be back. This place, I think all the players always look forward to this week, certainly I do. Every year we get very excited to come back here. This place is special. The golf course is great. We have such a good time. We stay with some great friends. It's just a week that I really look forward to, my family really looks forward to. To come back as defending champion is a real thrill, a real treat. We got to do the opening ceremonies on Monday, it was super cool to be a part of. I really enjoyed the whole parade. I had my kids with me, did the parade, watched the color guard, the drummers, the bagpipers, it was fun to be a part of. And get the official tartan jacket, and hit the shot with the cannon was a cool way to kick start the week. That cannon is just incredibly impressive, amazingly loud. It was a fun way for me to get the week started. Q. How many times have you seen that shot out of the bunker? And does it still give you a thrill when you see it? MATT KUCHAR: It does. I don't know there's a number to it. It's made a few of the highlight reels, which is a lot of fun to see and be part of. It was a magical shot. It was one of those that I look back. I kind of laugh at the emotion that came out of it. Normally I don't get that excited, pumped up on a golf course. But I can clearly remember having been close for three straight weeks, having played a great round up until the 17th, where I had a great shot and three‑putted from about five feet, and then to have things flip back and have the bunker shot fall into the hole on 18 was just an awesome kind of outpouring of emotion, whether it was relief, excitement, joy, everything coming out at one time for me. Q. Everyone talks about how much they love this golf course. There's a range of players, short hitters, long hitters. Can you quantify why. What are the elements of this golf course that seem to attract everybody? MATT KUCHAR: It's so unique, uniquely different, with the tree‑lined fairways, with the ability to basically recall and remember every hole. Every hole stands out. Even though you have a lot of holes that have similar characteristics of just tight on the left side, tight on the right side with trees, they have slight doglegs that make it exciting to play, make it exciting to try to truly play chess around this golf course, and positioning your tee shot in the right spot in the fairway. If it's not, you get to play all sorts of fun recovery shots. If you're off line, it's not that your ball is necessarily in a hazard and you're playing a drop. You find it and have a recovery shot, and you have a play. All the greens are made so that you do have a play. They're basically on the same level as the fairway. They're not perched up with bunkers everywhere, where you're just trying to leave yourself a bunker shot. You can actually run them all up on the greens. They're small greens. If you're on the green, you have a shot at birdie. It's a great layout, a great design, a memorable golf course. And I don't think it necessarily rewards a typical type of player. It's not a short hitter that always wins. You take Davis Love, who's won here more than anybody, and he, in his prime, would have been longer than the longest guy we've got today. He could hit it further than anybody. So you have guys like Davis, that can overpower courses, that play well here. And then you've got guys like myself, Luke Donald, Graeme McDowell, Jim Furyk, as kind of not your power players, that can also play well here. Q. You've had this unique perspective of playing a lot of golf in the Tiger era, and now playing in what might be what's becoming the Young Gun era. Is that exciting, encouraging or difficult? MATT KUCHAR: I remember I came out in a young gun era, me and Charles Howell, and we were dubbed "Young Guns". I think we need a new term. The game of golf is in such great shape right now. It's just so healthy. With the excitement that Rory McIlroy brings to the game, the excitement that Jordan Spieth brings to the game. Whatever Tiger does, it's still exciting. Phil Mickelson is still a part of the game. It's a really cool time to be a part of it. It's fun to be a part of the game. Q. After getting off to a kind of typical start for you with a couple top‑10s, your year since about March has been very atypical. What is going on, do you think? And coming to a course like this where you've had such great success, can that be a remedy? MATT KUCHAR: I hope so. It's been a little frustrating the last couple of weeks. It's not been my typical play that I've been used to. Actually I went to the Masters extremely excited about my game. I had worked on some things particularly for Augusta, but it was more things that I thought would be beneficial week in, week out, year‑round, and mainly it was improving my golf swing, but it was enabling me to hit the ball higher with more spin. And I thought that was something that was going to be a definite bonus at Augusta National, particularly the long irons, being able to hit them higher, softer, stop them quicker, something I thought was going to be a big bonus for me at Augusta National. And you can pretty much go anywhere with that combination. And I think I got carried away with the joy of being able to hit the ball so high, and some bad habits actually started creeping in there. I started hitting it higher and higher, and actually led to some things creeping in that weren't so good. I had a couple of practice days this week that were frustrating. I knew I wasn't where I wanted to be, and put in more hours than I was anticipating coming into this week, being my fourth week in a row. But I had a great day today, a great practice session. And this evening and tomorrow I'm excited to compete and certainly to play here at Harbour Town, and hope that the excitement that I found in my swing, as well as the excitement of playing this golf course and having the good memories come back. Hope to put on a good show and try to defend the title again this year. Q. You played Augusta so many times, watching last week, what did you make of Jordan's just second start? MATT KUCHAR: It's incredible. I can remember my college golf course, Bruce Heppler advising me prior to my first trip to Augusta, it was‑‑ I was going there in '98. I was '97 U.S. Amateur champion, and he pulls me in his office and says, "Matt, I'm so excited for you going down to Augusta. Now the course takes a lot of learning. If things don't go your way this year, it's okay. It's a learning curve. Your game is probably better suited for a U.S. Open." He was basically preparing me for maybe not my best performance at the Masters and saying it really requires some learning to play well there. And to see what Jordan has done in his two appearances, it's just remarkable. And I think it goes to show you course knowledge kind of can only take you so far, according to how well you're playing. Even if you know where to miss it and you're not in control of the golf ball, you may just miss it in the wrong spot because you're not playing well, even though you know better. If you're not in full control, sometimes course knowledge doesn't always help you. And if you're playing great golf and in full control of your golf ball, course knowledge is a bonus, but you pretty much can pick a course apart, and Jordan's done that. It's just amazing to win by the numbers he won by, and won by last week at the Masters. Q. With anchoring being banned at the end of the year, how many times over the last couple of years have guys approached you to ask them to show them your putting style? And has that increased in the past six months or so? MATT KUCHAR: I think when the rule first came out, had a number of people interested and then the last year, not as many. And of late more and more. I think seeing the deadline come up, there's more and more guys interested trying to figure out what it is I do, how I do it. Some of the key parts are getting loft and lie sorted out. With the belly putter they kind of have standards. With the way I do it, length is less important as it is a bully putter or long putter. But loft and lie become more important. So getting that figured. And then I think everybody tries to figure a system out, particularly for misses. If you're missing right, most people have checkpoints to go through, as do I. They kind of pick my brain on different checkpoints on how I go through putting and how to make fixes with it. Q. Assuming you're open to helping other guys with it, can you give us a handful of names of people you've worked with, maybe possibly helping them with it? MATT KUCHAR: Just last week Bernhard Langer was asking me a lot more questions. He last year at the Masters asked for some contact information, trying to get putters like mine. I was also picking his brain, though, some, and trying to figure out when he putted the Bernhard Langer style, which was similar to my left hand low braced up against the forearm. And just enjoyed hearing what he thought about when he putted that way. It was very much just a shoulder stroke he said. Didn't really think much more than just rocking his shoulders. So it's been fun to kind of be able to talk to a guy like that about the different ways we would think about putting. MARK STEVENS: Thank you for your time. Good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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