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BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 5, 2015

Geoff Ogilvy

RENO, NEVADA

GEOFF OGILVY: After Canada, it was a week before last year, and took like about four hours to get home from, where were we, Montreal. I was kind of over golf at that point. I was kind of like‑‑ Monday morning, I wake up, I wasn't going to come.
And then by Tuesday morning, Juls, my wife, and everyone said you gotta go play, you feel like you're playing well. Came up on Tuesday afternoon, played in the Pro‑Am, and won the tournament.
It's funny how things work. That was a nice week. I hadn't won for a while. I played really well the whole week. It kind of kicked me on to have a really good FedExCup, and I ended up making the Tour Championship, where, at this point last year, before I started this, I was nowhere near it.
So it was a really good week for me last year. And always fun to win a tournament, clearly.

Q. I think the 13th hole was one you won't soon forget. I think you earned 14 points on that hole last year and had the crucial eagle in the final round.
GEOFF OGILVY: Par 5 up the hill? Yeah. That was timely, I think. I can't remember the first eagle, but I definitely remember Sunday. I remember there's not a lot of leaderboards on the front nine.
And in this format, people can have 10 or 12 points on nine holes without even thinking about it. And they can come from miles away. So you never really know where you stand until you see a leaderboard. And I think I finally had seen one about then, maybe 11 or 12‑‑ maybe there's one up 10. I can't remember who it was. Who was it that finished second?

Q. Hicks.
GEOFF OGILVY: Justin Hicks. He came out of nowhere. I think I was one point behind going at that hole. And I just kind of‑‑ it was a massive bonus to eagle that and then birdie the next. And all of a sudden this is really tight. This format is cool. If you have an eagle, feels like it's getting three or four shots rather than just two. So eagled that and birdied the next and kind of had a relatively comfortable last few holes, which was nice.
I think I had two or three eagles in the tournament last year. Actually, at least two. And then they make a massive difference in this format because five points is a lot.

Q. Take us through your summer, sort of a light schedule. Just Chambers Bay and St. Andrews. Talk about your summer and the state of your game.
GEOFF OGILVY: My summer has been a winter, actually, because I've spent, between Chambers and here in Australia, and in Melbourne winters are not‑‑ they're not Chicago winters, but they're not Arizona winters. They're kind of pretty cool, and it's been raining a little bit. But it's been so hard to get the kids and stuff back to Australia to see my family and like their cousins and stuff.
But with them going to school over here, seemed like this was the best time of the year to do that. So played Chambers, played pretty well. I had a few weeks off. Played St. Andrews. Played pretty well. Neither result was amazing but I played quite well in both. And kind of gearing up to play the next three weeks, I think, and then kind of hopefully do well enough to have a big run through the playoffs.
So it's been a light schedule this summer. But that was kind of on purpose. I overplayed last year. So to that 2015 or this season was always going to be the one I wanted to play a light schedule so I could kind of kind of recharge a bit and sort of get back to playing 20‑plus tournaments from next year onwards.
I was always meant to play a large scheduler this year. Hopefully I can finish well and get to all the playoffs and on from there.

Q. Where is your game right now? Are you happy with the overall start‑to‑finish, tee‑to‑green, anything you've been working on specifically as you get ready to make a stretch run?
GEOFF OGILVY: Tee‑to‑green has been getting better every week. Chambers and St. Andrews I hit the ball as well as I could. I kind of made a mess of the back nine on Thursday. But the rest of it was really good.
The putting is coming around. It hasn't‑‑ if I have a week when I putt well, I'm going to do well, I think. Because my ball‑striking has been quite consistently nice, not amazing, but good enough and getting better all the time.
My putting's been a bit hit and miss. But, again, it feels like it's coming around, feel like I'm doing good stuff. And I don't think there's any reason why I can't, as you say, have a really good finish to the year. My game feels like in a pretty good place.

Q. Just looking at stats, there's only four guys, I think, this year that have repeated as champions. What makes that so difficult?
GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know. I think there's an element of it that should be easy. Because you're the last person to win around that course and you feel better‑‑ you're becoming more comfortable and happier than everybody else on the field on some level.
But obviously there's‑‑ at the start of it is against you. Winning a golf tournament is really difficult. It's 155 other guys there to try to beat you.
The standard feels like it's got better the last three or four years. So, I mean, winning golf tournaments is a difficult thing to do.
I just think repeating is‑‑ as I said there's an element of it that should be kind of easier, but it's still really, really hard to win a golf tournament. So it's just not going to happen very often.

Q. How often do you watch who is playing well coming into a particular event, anybody caught your eye coming into this this week?
GEOFF OGILVY: I normally am pretty good at watching form and stuff like that and watching the golf and watching the scores and stuff but I haven't the last couple of weeks. Feel like I've been out of it a little bit in Australia kind of hiding.
So I'm not exactly even 100percent sure who's here. So can't help you with that one.

Q. Can you talk about how this kickstarted your season last year? What was it about this that got you going?
GEOFF OGILVY: Well, I was kind of‑‑ I was ready to kind of write off the year last year about this time. And I wasn't in the FedExCup at this point in the playoffs. So I just decided I was ready to just say, oh, well, I'll just take six or seven weeks off and start again at the Fry's and have a bit of a rest.
But coming here, it's such a nice place. It's the perfect weather to play golf in. It's a beautiful course and it's a low‑key event. It's a nonstressful event to play.
Some golf tournaments are like an assault on your senses. And there's crazy traffic on the way to the golf course and lots of people and difficult to play. This is a really stress‑free, easy, really nice golf tournament to play.
I think that and the format has always suited me. I always used to feel like I played quite well in Denver, in the international, in this format. I think I've been more often a birdie/bogey type of golfer than a par every hole kind of golfer, which this format definitely suits a guy who makes lots of birdies. And lets you make a few bogeys as long as you're making enough birdies.
Just a combination of a few things, nice place, good format for me, and obviously the timing was right.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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