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THE MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT PRESENTED BY NATIONWIDEJune 4, 2015Bo Van PeltDUBLIN, OHIO AMANDA HERRINGTON: Thank you for joining us after an incredible round today, almost birdied every single hole. Ten birdies today and went out in 30 and finished with an 8‑under. Talk us through what was going right today. BO VAN PELT: Yeah, it was‑‑ you know, first two holes, just kind of hit okay. Birdied 3, and then I guess I birdied 5. And it's always good to get off to a good start here. It's a challenging golf course. To me, I think whenever you get the momentum going the right way ‑‑ had a good number on 6, hit it in there close. And 7, I was able to hit the green in 2. Two‑putt birdie, and had a good number on 8. And a good number on 9. When you have a day like this, seems like you get a lot of numbers where it's just easy to pull the right club. And my speed control was really good on the greens. These greens have so much slope and they're so fast that you have to marry the line and the speed perfect. Today I was seeing a good line and matching my speed. Q. Always great to have a round like that in front of family and friends. Talk about the support you've had out here so far. BO VAN PELT: I've been coming to Memorial since I was about nine or ten years old. My dad used to let me skip school and come to practice rounds. This is really where I started dreaming about playing professional golf. You're kind of coming out of a wet spring in Indiana and getting excited about summer golf. And I used to sit up on that range and chase these guys down and get autographs and balls. Other than the Masters, this tournament means more to me than any one I've ever played. So it's always good to play well around a place that means a lot to you. Q. Is that one of the reasons why you've played so well here, you've had some good finishes here over the years? BO VAN PELT: I think that has a lot to do with it, I think, anytime you come to a course that you have good feelings about. I grew up on bent greens and same type of turf. I grew up on greens that had a lot of slope. So I think anytime you come to a golf course where you're excited to be there, I think that that has a lot to do with it. I don't get to see my family from Indiana, my sisters and my mom and dad very often. And they always come over. So it's just a fun week for us. Q. That sandy on 18 was pretty nice and was a nice way to finish that round with momentum. How important was that to keep the round, how you had it rolling? BO VAN PELT: It was. I hit a good drive on 17 and that was really the first poor iron shot I had hit. I was kind of dead in that bunker to the right there. I thought I hit a pretty good drive on 18, it just turned over a little bit. I knew it was going to be tough to hit the green from where I was. I was just trying to make sure I kept it left of the flag. It was just nice to hit one in there so close I didn't have to think about making a 10‑footer, 15‑footer. My ball rolled up against a big lump of sand, which was actually kind of ice because I knew I was going to put no spin on it. I could just dump it out to the left and let it roll. So it was definitely a nice way to end. I didn't want to bogey the last two. Q. You saw the scores early, did you know pretty benign conditions out there? How was the course? Soft? Not soft? BO VAN PELT: Yeah, the fairways were a little soft. They weren't rolling very much. But the greens, they still had plenty of speed. I think you can talk to anybody starting Monday or Tuesday, the course is in as good of shape as I've ever seen it. I think that the rough is very thick. The fairways are really good. The greens are perfect, as always. So I think everybody was excited to play. It's the great thing about it, when you get weather like this, it's kind of like, hey, see what you can come do. It's right there. If you're a little off, it's a really tough golf course. But if you're on, there's some birdies to be had out there. Q. Do you have to be patient? A lot of guys are coming in saying you have to hit fairways, because it's a second‑shot course, is that pretty accurate? BO VAN PELT: Absolutely. When you've got that much slope and you know if you miss a green, you're going to have a tough up‑and‑down. And so that's kind of like the tricky part. You hit a lot of fairways here and so it's knowing when to go after a flag and when not to. And like I mentioned in my first comments, I had a lot of really good numbers to where I could just ‑‑ like I was on the driving range and just hit a shot. I think those are the days you have to take advantage of, because some days you might shoot even par, 1‑over, 1‑under, and a lot of it had to do with you were just in between clubs. Because you have to really be precise on this golf course on your second shot. Q. Any good childhood memories or stories of an autograph you got or ball you got or shot you saw? BO VAN PELT: Yeah, I've‑‑ how long you got? I've got a few. I mean, you know, I slammed my pinky in my dad's Ford Aerostar van, I thought I broke my hand in the parking lot. That was a memory I'll never forget. One year it was raining really bad and kind of our‑‑ I'd wear a T‑shirt and we'd wear our rain suits. That's kind of what you'd wear to come over here, because the weather had a tendency to rain quite a bit. We were laughing driving over here, I was with some older high school guys and they were like, oh, we're going to see some people bite it today, and we thought it was going to be really funny. We came walking through and we get behind 9 green, and I got a little too cocky and about my second step I slid the whole way down the hill. And I literally had mud from my ankle to my ear lobe. And about 30 minutes later the sun came out and I had to walk around with dried mud on me all day, and I was the one getting laughed at. There's a bunch. I remember I tried to get Greg Norman's autograph, he was No.1 in the world, and I couldn't get it. And I said something not very nice to him. That was my buddies' fault, they said I wouldn't say anything, but I did. I was 13, trying to impress ‑‑ Q. What was it? BO VAN PELT: I wouldn't repeat it (laughter). He was No.1 in the world and he was the only autograph I really wanted. Q. The occasion of slamming your pinky, were you in a hurry to get to the course? BO VAN PELT: No, it was raining and we were out in one of those parking lots. And I'll never forget it. He was like‑‑ I shut the door, and put my hand up here like this, and I went to reach up and grab the deal and I just slammed my pinky, my whole finger was inside the door, shut. But luckily it wasn't broken. And put it in some ice on the way home and no big deal. Q. How far a drive from Indiana? BO VAN PELT: It's just under two hours. Richmond is literally the first town when you cross the border on I‑70. Q. How old were you when you first came here and how many tournaments did you come here, do you think, before you finally played here? BO VAN PELT: I probably came every year from when I was 10 until I was 18, so probably eight straight years. I came to the Ryder Cup. My parents came with a bunch of friends for longer than that, probably for 15 years they had tickets, 15 or 20 years they had tickets. And then I got to play ‑‑ the first time I got to play, I believe, was '04, and I've played every year since. Q. How many family and friends do you have here, do you think? BO VAN PELT: I probably have like eight family members, and there's just a bunch of friends, different people I know from Richmond thathave been ‑‑ there's a bunch of people I know that have had tickets forever. So it's a good group. So it's fun to see everybody. Q. I think the good year in 2012 and a few years haven't been quite to that level. What do you think has been the reason for those? BO VAN PELT: I got burnt out a little bit, to be quite honest. I played a bunch of golf for three years and had played pretty well, and I just think I was just kind of tired of playing. Just kind of‑‑ and there's so many is good players out here, if you get a little sloppy with what you're doing, there's not that big a difference between a great year and a so‑so year out here. I think that's the thing for people that don't play. It's hard to understand that. You barely make a cut and you make a top 10 out of it. But if you just miss that cut, you make no money. You do that five times a year, that could be a million dollar difference in your year. And really how much different did you play? It literally might have been one hole that's this much. So I think just part of that I was just kind of mentally burnt out and had gotten away from some of the fundamentals that my coach and I have worked on for 15 years. And I just had to start getting back to kind of strip everything down and go back to what worked for a long time. Q. What did that process start and what kind of got you back passionate about it again? BO VAN PELT: You know, I think‑‑ we had kind of a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago. He came down to watch me play Colonial. And Friday at Colonial, I don't know if I've ever hit it that bad in a round of golf on Tour, and still shot like even par or 1‑over, I was trying to make the cut. And he watched me playing, he was like, man, you did a great job hanging in there. He's like I'm coming to Tulsa. He flew in literally that morning, flew out that night. He's like, you're going to see me every week until we get this figured out. One of the play in Tulsa is a place called Cedar Ridge and they have some mirrors on the range. And we'd had so much rain, every golf course was closed on that Sunday. And they were nice enough to let me go out there and shag my own balls. We sat out there for probably seven hours in front of those mirrors. My setup was so bad, I was like, well, no wonder I can't hit a good shot. I'm like, this is terrible. Looked like I had never played golf before. So that was kind of the start. I feel like that was kind of, all right, you can kind of fake it and act like it's not that bad, and then I looked in the mirror and I'm like, man, that's terrible, no wonder you're not playing any good. I guess I kind of needed that. I got some pop back and gained some distance, felt like I hit it really good at the Byron Nelson for kind of the first week. I played pretty good on Tuesday. I played the Pro Am here and had a good nine holes. He came in again this week. You never know when you're going to make a bunch of birdies, but it was just nice starting to see the ball kind of do what you were used to it doing. Q. How does getting off to a good start compare to some of your other Memorial appearances here in the past? BO VAN PELT: It's kind of been a mixed bag. I don't know the record I've had here that well. But there's times I I've starred off good, and there's times I played good on Sunday. I think a couple of times I had good days on Sunday, and backdoor finished 12th or 8th or whatever. But any tournament you play, it's always nice to get off to a good start. You know you have a good field here, and sometimes that's all you need is one really hot round and just play solid the rest of the way. Anytime you can kind of get ahead of a golf course like this, it's definitely a bonus. Q. Did you completely lose interest or exactly what happened? BO VAN PELT: I wouldn't say I completely lost interest. I just think that you better be‑‑ you want to play well out here with as many good players as there are, you better be 100 percent. I think it's one of those deals, I didn't realize it at the time. But I was still practicing a bunch and working out and doing all that, but if you're not 100 percent focused, you're going to lose some of your drive. I think my expectation level had gotten out of whack. I had been pretty consistent for three or four years and I think I was not very accepting of bad shots or just kind of playing okay. And I think it just wore me down, where I wasn't having much fun playing. I went through it in college. I quit playing in college, I never thought I'd play again. So I guess I just had to have one more of those little spats. But I'm pretty fired up to play again. So it's been kind of fun to try to figure it out again. Q. How long were you out in college? BO VAN PELT: About three or four months. Q. That's it? BO VAN PELT: Yeah. Q. Let you back on? BO VAN PELT: Yeah, surprisingly. I went in to ask Coach Holder where he thought I should transfer to. We had just got done with finals. I hadn't played since Hawaii. We got back from ten days in Hawaii, and I gave him all my clubs back. I didn't even own a golf club. I just got done with finals, and I said, hey, can I come in and talk to you. He was like, yeah, sure. I said, I've got two years of eligibility left, where do you think I should transfer to? I said I'm going to start playing some tournaments in the summer and see if I like it again. He said, man, I'd love to have you. It's not like I kicked you off the team. I was playing every tournament for OSU. I was kind of like that's not how I really thought this conversation was going to go. But obviously I was very thankful for the opportunity, probably something I didn't deserve. And I tell people all the time he's going into the Oklahoma Golf Hall of Fame, and they ask me what are my thoughts of him. I owe him everything. Next year I was First Team All‑American and two years later I was on Tour. Q. What were your teammates? BO VAN PELT: When I first got to school, it was Tripp Kuehne, Kris Cox, Chris Tidland, Alan Bratton, Jackson Bregman, Leif Westerberg, Brian Guetz. And then kind of towards the end, Ed Loar, Boyd Summerhays. Q. During your break, how did your teammates respond to you and how did they accept you back? BO VAN PELT: They were fine. You know, we were all living together, six of us living in a house, and‑‑ Q. You did all the cooking‑‑ never mind. BO VAN PELT: There was not a lot of cooking going on in college. But they were great. And all those guys I'm still friends with today. They didn't have to be that way, but they were. And so I was always thankful for that. Q. It's hard, I would think, when you're in college, your parents asking you, well, what's going on. Why are you deciding not to play golf? How did you deal with all of that? BO VAN PELT: You know, it was‑‑ my parents were great. They had been great the whole‑‑ my whole kind of journey. Golf was kind of my thing. They wanted me to be happy. I think they were probably, I'm sure, disappointed or didn't really know what was going on. But they never really gave me a hard time about it. They wanted me to do good in school. And they were like, if that's not what you want to do, this was always kind of your thing. My dad, even though he was a professional athlete, he never had to tell me to go practice. I never had parents that told me to go to the golf course or I wasn't practicing enough. He used to take my clubs away from me and told me to go be a kid for the day. We never talked about it at the dinner table. It wasn't like that at the house I grew up in. It was kind of my thing and they supported me, and whatever I needed they were there. But it wasn't the end all, be all in our house. Q. How many times have you had this kind of round? BO VAN PELT: They asked me that in there, I don't really remember. In the charity deal, at Notah Begay's tournament, I had 11 a couple of years ago. I did a deal with Daily a couple of years ago, and I think I had 11 or 12 in 17 holes, but probably not very often. I think whenever I've shot low I've made an eagle or something like that. Q. On the passion thing, I'm curious how old the kids are, and was that any type of a tug on you? BO VAN PELT: Yeah, I mean my kids are 14, 12 and 8. And yeah, it was easier when they were little. We had a motor home and they were out all the time. It's definitely harder when you have to miss stuff, as they're playing sports and you want to be there for all that. But they're great about it. They understand. They know that whenever I can, I try to get home, even if it's for a day. So there's definitely part of it. I think my rookie year I was 23. I'm 40 this year. I added it up, 40 percent of my life I've been out here doing this. And I think at some point you go, man, maybe I should just go do something else. And I kind of got to that point. But, you know, I'm excited about playing. And I'm not quite done yet, I guess. Q. What would you do? BO VAN PELT: Who knows? I don't know. Something. I'd figure something out. I don't know, there's no‑‑ I think‑‑ I don't know what I'd do. Q. You've never got to that point where you sat down with your wife and said‑‑ BO VAN PELT: No, I've never explored any other options, so it's‑‑ I think I was still like‑‑ I realized I still wanted to play, even though I wasn't having much fun playing, I knew I wasn't really done. It was just kind of not really that into it. And so you just can't go through the motions out here. I mean, there's too many good players. And the line between playing good and not playing well at all is very small. If you take it for granted it will go away. Q. Has that line changed a lot since you first started out here? BO VAN PELT: I think so. And I think ten years from now the line will be even finer. There's more great players playing right now around the world than there ever have been. And the quality of golf is higher than it ever has been, and ten years it's going to be even better than it is now. It's like that in every sport. It's the evolution of the quality of instruction, equipment, the amount of people that play golf around the world, the places that they're playing, and the better athletes that are playing. I don't think there's any question. Q.  Ten years you can be on the Champions Tour, is that a good thing? BO VAN PELT: Yeah, I'll be an empty nester, my youngest is eight. In ten years, they won't want to hang out with their dad. I'll be looking for something to do, and it's perfect. They only play after half the year, anyway. It's like 23 weeks, it's perfect. AMANDA HERRINGTON: Thank you, Bo. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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