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DIAMOND RESORTS INVITATIONAL BENEFITING FLORIDA HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN

January 16, 2016

Rick Rhoden

WINDERMERE, FLORIDA

THE MODERATOR: Good playing today, finished second place. Talk about your round today.
RICK RHODEN: Well, I started out great. After six holes, I was 3 under. I made three nice putts. Then I mis‑hit a ball on the 7th hole on the par 3, and I was the first to hit. I felt like the wind was really blowing at me a lot. With the club I picked, I felt like, if I hit it, I couldn't hit it past the hole. I hit it, and it went over the green in the hazard, and I didn't get it up and down and got a double bogey.
And after that, I never played‑‑ I never hit a good shot really. 18th hole was a mis‑hit shot. I was aiming‑‑ I was hitting my iron so bad, I was aiming 20 feet left, and I hit it right at the flag. It just worked out good.
But I putted great the whole week. I never three‑putted, and the greens are pretty tough to putt. That's kind of what kept me in there because my play today after the 6th hole was not very good.

Q. Was there a competitive edge with Smoltz and Glavine running right behind you, as far as baseball players, trying to be that top guy on the leaderboard?
RICK RHODEN: I don't know. They play together all the time. They're comfortable playing together. They're both pretty good players. I played with Tom yesterday. I never played with him before. He was a good player.
John's probably the best player of that threesome, those three guys, and he had a great round today. He's capable of doing that. That didn't surprise me.
The way I was playing, I thought Billy Joe Tolliver was going to pass me. I was playing in the group. He chipped in a ball and made a birdie, and all of a sudden, he's only like two behind with a par 5 coming that he can reach and I can't. I figured he'd get a birdie there, and we'd probably be tied going to 18. But he three‑putted‑‑ he double bogeyed the par 3, which he doesn't do very often, and he had to give two back. So that gave me some breathing room with him.

Q. Smoltz said he played this course before. How did you feel about this course as opposed to some of the other places you've played before? I guess, what was your observations of playing here? What did you enjoy about it?
RICK RHODEN: First of all, it's only an hour and a half from my house. I live in Florida and play in Florida a lot. I like playing Bermuda greens and stuff.
The course is a great course for our guys. It's very forgiving on your driving, and we've got guys that hit the ball a long way. Sometimes not so straight, but this course is good for those guys.
I'm surprised there wasn't better scores. I know that yesterday was a tough day to play, wet and windy. Today was windy. So a lot of guys aren't used to playing in the wind like the guys in Florida. So it's tough for them.
We have some really good players that didn't play well this week, some of our better players. Mulder and Gagne are both really good players, and they just had a bad week here. But I'm sure, when we see them again in Lake Tahoe, they'll be playing good.

Q. I think there's mostly baseball players in this. Is there some kind of transition to golf, like I guess during the off‑season or off days, it makes it easy with the swing or something like that? It's just an easy transition from one sport to the other?
RICK RHODEN: I don't know that it's an easy transition. I think that as a group the hockey players are probably the best players as a group. It's just like hitting the puck. It's on the ground. The baseball throwing and hitting action is pretty similar to hitting a golf ball. So most athletes that play baseball are pretty good golfers if they really want to take it up and get with it.
For a long time, I was the only baseball player that won a tournament on the Celebrity Tour. We had some good players. Now I think we've got a few guys that have a really good chance of winning every time they go out there.
Mardy Fish, that's the second time I played with Mardy. He played good in Tahoe, but today he was really good. He had one bad tee shot, hit a tree, and stayed inbounds. At that point, I birdied that hole. If he'd have been out, it would have been a five‑shot swing, and it was only a two‑shot swing, and he would have had a little heat on him.
Once he got that, he got rolling, because I never got within, I think six was the closest. I started playing bad, and he was just like on cruise control. He played really good.

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