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SENTRY TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONSJanuary 2, 2019Patrick ReedKapalua, Maui, Hawaii JACK RYAN: We would like to welcome Patrick Reed to the interview room here at the 2019 Sentry Tournament of Champions. Patrick's history here includes a win and a runner-up finish, so if we could just get an opening comment on making your return to Kapalua. PATRICK REED: Yeah, it's awesome to be back. Not being here last year and feeling like I did a lot of things pretty well the year before and did not get a win and come back to a place that I feel real comfortable over was a bummer. To be able to win our first major and also get ourselves back to this event means a lot. And it's a great kind of place to start the year, especially having the off-season and kind of taking some time off to get your feet underneath you. Even though the wind blows really hard here the fairways are pretty generous and you can start getting your game back for the rest of the year of the. JACK RYAN: Take some questions, please. Q. You usually play a lot anyway but when you looked at this year's schedule did you find yourself adding events because it was so condensed or is it just a matter of everything's mixed around but it's essentially the same schedule? PATRICK REED: I think the biggest difference is I feel like I'm playing, well, I am playing basically the same amount of events, but it's kind of more equally spread out. It just seemed like in the past years I would have late in the season like eight- or nine-week run in a row. And now it just seems like a lot of three weeks on, one week off or four weeks on, one week off. There's not any of these really huge, long stretches. So I think kind of the more I looked at it, the more it feels like it's front-loaded compared to back-loaded like it's been in the past. But every week we look at the schedule it just seems like it's just kind of with how they moved it, every month you have a big event so you have to just kind of get ready for that event that month. Whether you like to play leading in or whether you like to take a week off going in, just for me it just seemed to kind of fit where I'm playing a lot of just like short bursts rather than a lot of these long marathons of four, five, six weeks in a row. Q. Did anything get taken off your schedule because of how condensed it is? PATRICK REED: No, not really. I think, I mean there might be a couple spots where in the past I might have played a certain event, but now I might not be playing that event because I'll be playing one later on. But the actual amount of events is not changing for me. It's going to be around the same number. It's just it's spread out a little better for me. Q. Is there a little bit different perspective being here this week after missing a year? Does it make you maybe appreciate being here a little bit more? PATRICK REED: Oh, it does. It's always awesome to be able to come back and play, especially at such an awesome golf course because I just think back home right now when I left it was about 43 degrees and blowing 20 and raining sideways. So it was cold and miserable and to be able to hop on a flight, come over here and play this awesome event and have it be 75 degrees and sunny, even though it's windy, it's just an awesome place to be. It's a very good spot to kind of start your game and kind of see what you've worked on during the off season and just kind of kick off some of that rust going in. Q. Why do you play this course well? What goes into that? PATRICK REED: I think it just brings out the creativity. Even though the fairways are wide, there's areas that you need to put the ball in order to a be, to attack the greens. I mean just because of a hole might be 50-yards wide it doesn't mean you can be on every spot that have fairway to attack a flag. With how slopey the greens are and how much the wind blows and kind of the side hill kind of lies you get, I just feel like it taps into kind of the creativity that you need to play just like kind of at Augusta. Play golf shots rather than golf swing. And for me during the off season it's a lot about playing golf swing to make sure the technique and get the fundamentals where I want them to be. And then my first event back coming to a place like this where I can literally just get straight into golf mode, just playing golf shots, it just kind of fit right into my wheelhouse. Q. Does it seem like that long ago that you won the Masters? Has that feeling kind of hung on as far as how you felt down the stretch, how it felt to win and of course the things that happened after? PATRICK REED: It has, it has. Just being able to reflect on it during the off season and go back to the week and watch a little bit of it was awesome because I haven't seen any of the final round until this off season. I was always so busy and then it seemed like when they were playing it was when I was overseas and at two or three in the morning I'm sleeping, I'm not going to be able to watch it on TV. So to be able to see some of it and just kind of know what I was thinking and watching myself hit the golf shots. I was able to learn a lot from it and try to carry over and try to use that and different situations, different moments that I have throughout the year and different rounds of golf. Q. Did anything surprise you when you were watching it back again? Anything you went oh, God, I don't remember that or anything that stuck out like that? PATRICK REED: I think really when I was looking through it and some of just watching it, nothing really stood out, anything that I didn't already see or already kind of knew what I did. The only one I would say is I didn't realize how close that one came on 7 when they had the eagle fly over to that bowl. You can't see where it lands and being in kind of that left rough it's, from where I was I thought it landed close to pin high. I didn't realize if it goes probably a yard farther where it actually landed it's not coming back down. It actually would have stayed up top. So there's just stuff like that. But the good thing is after watching it and kind of dissecting it a little bit, there wasn't anything that I felt like I should have done differently. I didn't feel like I made any kind of careless mistakes. You're always going to make a bad golf swing at some point throughout the tournament, throughout the round, and you just hope to be able to salvage whatever you did wrong there. But actual careless mistakes whether it's club off tees or hitting a wrong club into the green, I didn't really feel like I did really any of that. I was actually, I was actually more impressed with, they had a shot down the line on 11 and I ended up laying up and I have never laid up on 11 from those right trees. I had a perfect window and actually to keep it left of the trees and just cut it hard to try to get it on the green there. And I would have done that any other year. And any other time I set up there I mean 90 percent of the time I'm probably going to give it a go and to have the confidence in my game to actually chip it down there, lay up short of the water and try to get up-and-down with the wedge shot. It showed that I matured in my golf game, to play at a golf course like that, whether you're playing well or playing poorly, to be able to pull yourself back and actually play the high percentage, smart shot. That's the reason why I feel like I was able to play very well and win there. Q. I think I've heard you say that growing up every play you had was dreaming of winning the Masters. Was it as satisfying personally as you thought it would be? PATRICK REED: Oh, for sure. I think the biggest thing was to get up on 18 and Rick just got, just made birdie to get to one within the lead. So now on 18 I have to play the hole properly. I can't just kind of make a bogey and still put the jacket on. Having to step on the tee that I have not hit very well throughout my entire career being there, besides this year, and to be able to setup and being able to draw the golf ball and have to go and hit the helicopter and to hit it perfect basically four days in a row. Even though I only hit the fairway three of four days, I hit one that I thought was absolutely perfect and it ended up bouncing and it somehow got to the bunker. And to be able to execute that tee shot and then to execute a soft iron shot off of a steep up slope and not get it going left. And to feel like I hit a good first putt, it's hard that the ball is going to stop on that slope. And when hit that next one and I knew it was going in, it's like all the weight got lifted off my shoulders. It was a really cool moment. I don't think I'll ever have a moment like that again. Q. Did you feel all the weight at that moment or -- PATRICK REED: It was a mixture of both, of that moment and also everyone who is out here on TOUR believes that they can win majors. If you don't believe you can, if you can win a major, win a golf tournament, then you're probably not getting the most out of your talent and out of your self. And you always can believe that you can do something but until you actually do it there's always that little self doubt in the back of your mind. And to go into Augusta and to be able to play the final round that I did and to cap off the win there, it just felt like the relief of getting your first major finally has gone away and now it's just go out there and attack as many as I can and then try to hold up as many trophies as I can and try to win the career Grand Slam at some point. Q. How up to speed are you on the new rules and can you imagine any scenario with you leaving the flag in with a two, three foot putt? PATRICK REED: A two or three or four foot putt? No. Never. I won't on that short of a putt because I don't know how many times I've putted on the putting green and I have the flag in and it's like there's an, it's like a shield around the hole, it never goes in. But if I pull it I mean I'm all of a sudden the ball goes in the heart. So I particularly don't like putting with the flag in. Where I think it will help is you get those 70, 80, 90 footers, those really long one where your caddie is over there tending, if he can't stand in the right spot because other guys' balls on the green and now he's having to not only have the flag at such an angle where he's tending but also he's standing pretty far off of the actual pin high, I mean it's going to throw off your depth perception because you're going to see a flag angling and see a caddie standing two or three feet past or two or three feet short. So I think that would be the only time that I would keep the flag in is if I feel like you can't stand kind of close to the hole. But you know, I think the biggest one that's going to get guys is when you drop the ball now. If it's a two club length you're dropping it, it has to stay within that two club lengths, it can't, where it lands, it doesn't go two lengths from there, it's within your two club length tees, it has to stay in that area. That's what I read. Q. I'm sure you're right. PATRICK REED: Say I take relief and now so nearest point is right here, I put my tee, and then I have to take my two club lengths and I put my next tee. So if you're on a side slope like this and the ball lands inside that area wherever that ball strikes it used to allow wherever it rolled within two club lengths it was in play. How I read it and then when I was talking to the guys, even if you're on a huge slope, it has to stay within that first two club lengths. So if you drop it on edge of this tee and it bounces outside, it's a re-drop. It has to stay within that area. And then same thing on the one club length, it has to stay within. So I mean that being new I think that's going to be one that guys might trip up on. And then also having to drop from knee height. I haven't really asked yet what happens if all of a sudden you naturally just go like that way and drop it, does it count as a no drop so you have to re-drop or is it a penalty? So those are the only two I feel like guys might get tripped up on. But I think it's huge being able to fix spike marks with how fast and slopey greens are these days. I mean hitting a putt over a spike mark from six feet can make a huge difference than hitting it over a flat spot. And then on top of it making the water hazards where there's one basically whether it's yellow or red it's the same drop, rather than having these multiple drops that you're allowed to take. I think it's just going to, you know, clear things up and clarify it and allow things to be easier where you're not having to call rules official over every second because now you're in red hazard, oh, now you're in a yellow hazard. And then also with being able to move loose impediments in the bunker, I think that's, I mean that's a good one. There's a lot of times that we play that you are in a bunker and you look down and there's a rock right behind your ball and some places you can remove it, other places you can't. So just kind of keep it more uniform where you're allowed to remove them everywhere. So there's a lot of things I think that are going to make golf a little easier, a little easier to understand, a little easier, a little quicker, but at the end of the day hopefully you don't have to use too many of the rules. Hopefully all you have to do is fix some spike marks and the only thing you have to worry about is whether you want to leave the flag in or out. Q. Obviously you just had talked about watching the Masters here. What was the difference between the Masters and the rest of the year that maybe you didn't do quite as well that kept you from winning again? PATRICK REED: I think the biggest thing was just kind of the consistency. At Augusta I was very consistent. I put four rounds together, the swing stayed kind of where it needed to be and the putting stayed where it needed to be throughout the week and as I moved on from that point, getting a handle on all the extra things that come with winning a Masters and winning a major just trying to put it all together and figure it all out, it took a little bit of time. But I felt like it was just, just if I was hitting the ball well one of the days, putting might not quite have been there and/or vice versa. And at Augusta it just seemed that everything was pretty solid throughout the week. And that's the crazy thing about golf these days, how deep it is. One just mediocre day, not even a bad day, just one mediocre day is the difference of winning a golf tournament and finishing 10th, 15th. And if you have a mediocre day you need to have a really good day, like a great one, in order to have a chance to win the golf tournament. And it's basically kind of how it was at Augusta, it was just, it wasn't amazing perfect golf, but it was just consistently, steady and consistently just solid golf and that's how you win golf tournaments rather than all these ups and downs and great rounds and okay rounds to good rounds. Q. Yeah, just wanted to ask you one other thing. You had a pretty entertaining fall and you had some very outspoken things to say and I was just curious, in the grand scheme of things, do you really care what, you just seem to be kind of a calm in the eye of the storm thing kind of thing I guess do you really care what goes on about what people say or write or anything? PATRICK REED: You know, honestly, I'm just out here, when I go out and I play golf, I'm passionate about the game and I talk about it, you know some things are going to be written how I mean it, you know some things are going to get written how other people perceive it. So you're just kind of taking everything with a grain of salt and just kind of continue trying to do what you do and that's play golf and put one foot in front of the other and go hang out with the kids and just have some fun. Q. You seem, you seem to just say what you think. PATRICK REED: Right. Q. I think sometimes that's perceived as, in several different ways. PATRICK REED: Right. I mean the biggest thing is I've always wanted to be very, very real to who I am and be very -- I'm very passionate about my country, passionate about the game of golf. And some people are going to like that, some people aren't. It's impossible to please everybody in this world. I mean it's just not, it's just not going to happen. The biggest thing is you just got to stay true to who you are and play the game of golf and live the way that you feel like you know best represents yourself and best represents your family and I feel like we're doing that very well and just need to keep on doing what I do and keep on hopefully playing some better golf. Q. When did you get over here? PATRICK REED: That's your last question? Q. No, I got about 12 more right behind it. I'll stop. Let me get to the point. Were you still at home, did you get your Masters invitation in the mail? PATRICK REED: I did. Q. And as the defending champion were you expecting something a little different than what you got in the years before? PATRICK REED: First time I ever played in Augusta and getting the invitation was absolutely amazing. And getting the one this year that was the exact same was still just as amazing as getting the first. I still have my first one. Q. Did you know that first one was coming by the way? PATRICK REED: The first one? I did. Q. You knew they actually sent stuff in the mail? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I did. Because the reason why I knew is because right after I won Wyndham they go, hey, just wait until you get that invitation in the mail, it's unbelievable. And so, yeah, I have that first one and then I have the one that we just got and both of them are ones I'm going to save and cherish forever. Because just to get the invitation to play at the Masters is unbelievable. Just the chills when you're opening it up it's just an awesome experience. Even though it's just a piece of paper that has your invitation on it. Q. What happened to the other four? PATRICK REED: I don't know. I don't know. There's nothing like the first one and the one right after you win. Q. Have you decided on a dinner and what are your thoughts on it? PATRICK REED: Yeah, I'm definitely going to fatten everyone up. I'm going to go with the bone in rib eye, mac and cheese, creamed spinach, creamed corn. I'll go Caesar salad, but then also I was going to do -- I was going to make multiple options, because some guys might not like steak. So there will be grilled chicken, there will be probably some kind of seafood as well as probably a couple healthier options, just I want to please everyone there, it's not just for me, it's for all the past champions and everybody and I want everyone to have a great time. Q. So let the record reflect that this will be one time you are trying to please everybody. PATRICK REED: Hey, hey, that's fine. Q. Even though you can't. PATRICK REED: Even though you can't. Hopefully I can please the 30 something guys that are in the room. I mean, putting a piece of meat in front of them I think would do that, right? JACK RYAN: Thank you as always for the time and best of luck this week. PATRICK REED: Thanks, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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