VERIZON BYRON NELSON CLASSIC

May 12, 2001

Mike Weir

MIKE WEIR: Yeah, it was. Did that tie my best score this year?

MIKE WEIR: Oh, second best. That's right. Yeah, it was a good day today. I played very solidly and took advantage of a few of the good shots I hit. I felt like my wedge game was a little off, and four or five times I was inside of 100 yards and didn't get it up-and-down, and that was a little disappointing, but overall I struck the ball very solidly. And the only danger I was in of making a bogey was on my last hole, I drove it in the rough and hit it in the green side bunker; and hit a pretty good shot out of there, but besides that it was just a solid, kind of steady day down the middle of the fairway on the green, you know, make one here and there and keep going.

MIKE WEIR: I am a little surprised because it is there for the taking, but at the same time there is just enough wind there to cause a little indecision with club selection, but I am surprised, yeah.

MIKE WEIR: I felt 17 was a little bit tricky. It was blowing downwind when I got to the tee, which is usually a normal 6-iron for me, and I pulled the club and I hit a nice shot, and the wind switched and probably 30 feet below the hole, but besides that -- actually there was a few other times that I just kind of my judged the wind that, you know, I was 25 feet long or 20 feet short, but like I said, with my wedge game in particular it seemed like I didn't catch the wind right when I was hitting the wedge shots.

MIKE WEIR: I would say it picked up a little bit more as the day went on, but it wasn't real strong. It was just a little bit stronger than the start of the day.

MIKE WEIR: I am, really. I mean I'm kind of surprised. You know, I thought shooting 65 I might be within four or five, but to be only one off the lead, as it stands now, it could be a couple or three by the end of the day, but I wouldn't have thought that -- I thought today with being a calm day I would have needed to shoot I thought maybe 7-under to put myself in real good shape. So I thought at the end of today maybe like 15 would be the number.

MIKE WEIR: That does happen sometimes. I've been in that situation. I remember playing a Canadian Tour event. I can't recall where it was, but I remember we were both maybe two shots clear of the field and we started the last day and it was just one of those stale days we both shot around even par and someone from behind came in and passed us, and may have even been a little bit like that this year after Doral with Davis, Hal and myself playing that threesome, no one did really anything. I shot 1-under and I think Hal and Davis both shot even, and granted, it was a little bit tougher day, but we just seemed to never really get any momentum and feed off one another, and it was all a lot of pars, and not much action happening.

MIKE WEIR: Well, yeah. It'll be a shoot-out. That's for sure. With that rain last night it's really going to -- even tomorrow with this heat, the humidity is keeping the moisture in the green, so it's still going to be very soft tomorrow, so you really have to fire at some flags tomorrow and not settle for making pars out there. You're going to have to have something happen out there to win the tournament.

MIKE WEIR: I played yesterday, Friday.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. A little bit softer, different wind direction, completely different wind direction, so the finishing holes yesterday played into the wind, 16. I couldn't reach it. Today I hit a 3 -- no, I hit a 5-wood into the green today. It was right between a 3-iron and a 5-wood for me today, so 17 yesterday I hit a 4-iron and a 6-iron today. So it was quite a bit different wind direction, so the course played a little bit differently. Some of the starting holes, two and three played a little longer. Three played much longer. So played a little bit different, but again, the greens were starting to get a little bit firmer yesterday, but then the rain last night softened them back up.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah, you try not to let it affect your own game. You just play within yourself and play your own game, but in the back of your mind you know that there's some low scores happening. I really didn't look at the board until 15 or 16 and saw that 12-under was still leading. I saw that some other guys had really shot some low numbers from well back and kept in there, but I was really surprised that 12 was at the top. I thought I'd missed a page of the board. I thought there might have been some 15s, 14s, 13s, but I was surprised.

MIKE WEIR: No. I started at 11:30 today. The guys were still -- they started at 11 I guess.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. Like I said, I really didn't look at the board until late in the back nine, so I wasn't really aware of it.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. I think consistency with my putter, I think, a little bit. I think when I putt well, I putt really well, and when I don't putt, you know -- it's just there's too big of a gap in there. I need to be a little bit more consistent with that. But this week I feel very good with my putter, but I think overall I think I'm just a little sporadic. I don't know if that's a good assessment because some weeks I don't drive it very well. Other weeks -- I think just overall I need to just tighten it up a little bit more and overall be consistent, because some weeks, you know -- I mean it's like everybody, like you guys going out and playing, one week you're driving it great, can't make a putt, the next week you make everything, but you're hitting it off line and you have to scramble to get up-and-down, but you feel like you're going to make everything. That still happens to me, too. But I think just all the way around a little more consistency is probably the big thing.

MIKE WEIR: This is the second week of a three-week stretch. I'll play next week, take a week off and then we have some big tournaments. Well, I feel like this is a big tournament. Next week's -- they're all great tournaments coming up right now. This tournament, Colonial, Memorial then the Open. That's kind of my stretch coming up, so they're all very important tournaments in the next few weeks, so I've been working really hard on my game the last three weeks. I took three weeks off after the Masters and really took three weeks. I didn't touch a club, so I've been pretty rusty the last little bit. Last week was pretty sporadic and it's starting to come around now, so...

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. That was a little longer than I liked. We were busy moving into a new place, so we were busy with that, but usually in the off season I like to take a month and a half or so and just put them right away. And I've been used to that all my life growing up in Canada taking a lot of time off. It used to be four or five months straight off, and now to take a month off never bothers me, and I usually come out at the beginning of the year playing well because even though I haven't practiced very much, I work on my fundamentals in the house a little bit, but I'm mentally really ready to go and that's the best kind of formula for me I've found.

MIKE WEIR: Yes.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. A little longer than six probably. Yeah. Seven. Probably seven. And you know, the other time I didn't -- didn't play at all really. Played hockey.

MIKE WEIR: Oh, we still live in Utah. We just moved a couple blocks, but just the timing of it wasn't the greatest. It was the third week of my three weeks off, so the week before that it was all packing up, doing other stuff, so it was hard labor for me.

MIKE WEIR: I think, you know, when it's warm and humid like that when there's so many -- playing with Freddie, we get big crowds and you're kind of enclosed in some of those greens and some of the tee boxes. It is very hot and humid and on some of those tees, but in Canada where I grew up, it gets like that in the summer. It gets very humid, hot.

MIKE WEIR: I think it would be big for the Canadian Open if it moved into the meat of the season really. I think the golf courses are in better shape at that time of year. They run faster. I think it would just be better for the tournament.

MIKE WEIR: Move it around a little bit more? I don't know if they'd go any west of Calgary, but they can move it around.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. Yeah. They could move it up there. I haven't played many golf courses up there that could hold them, but I've heard there are some good ones up there that could hold the tournament. It's good that they move it around.

MIKE WEIR: That would probably be fair, yeah. What, give them a summer date or move to Calgary one in three years?

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. Yeah. They should -- I don't know. I think it should be every year, really. I mean I might be biased in that, but I think that the Canadian Open has the appeal of a national -- it's really the only national championship outside the U.S. Open that we play that's a regular event on our tour that it would be nice to see it have a summer date. It always has a great field, and I think it would just be great for the tournament and the field would even be better.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. Broke the jinx last year. I made the cut.

MIKE WEIR: Well, no. I tend to do well on difficult golf courses. I've always played difficult golf courses well because I drive the ball usually fairly straight, and I think the strength of my game is just kind of plodding along and hitting solid shot after solid shot, so I tend to maybe creep near the top of the leader board more on tougher golf courses than golf courses where a lot of guys are brought in that he can hit shots out of the rough that he can maybe spray it around a little more.

MIKE WEIR: Well, I like to feel that I can adapt to anything, so you know, I've shot low numbers. I've shot 62 this year at Doral and playing pretty well here this week, so I like to think I can make lots of birdies if needed and play a consistent game if I need to.