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AMERICAN CENTURY CHAMPIONSHIPJuly 13, 2019Tony RomoStateline, Nevada Q. Nice work. 26 yesterday; 25 today. Looked like you were under complete control except for maybe one hole on 14. TONY ROMO: Yeah, I think -- I felt good about the game coming in and it's kind of held up this week. Swing feels the same. It's nice when you're not tinkering, trying to find stuff. You're just trying to play the shot, sometimes you execute. Sometimes you don't. Overall a good day. Ball striking has been real good this week. I missed a few putts but I think everyone's going to do that out here. You just have to be aggressive and roll some in and hopefully a few go in. Q. Nice roll on 16 from the fringe after coming out of the bunker. TONY ROMO: I actually was a little disappointed. Good bunker shot, but caught the collar on the initial land, but I had a good line on a read. Some of them are tough to read when you get in that 12- to 15-foot range. But that one you stepped up, and you're, like, oh, you can see it right away. So you're able to kind of trust it and just hit it and it went right in. Q. Yesterday you mentioned 31 on the back nine and what was it today? How many birdies did you have and -- TONY ROMO: I think 10, 11, 15, 16, I think. So I think we had four and then gotta figure out how to make birdie on 18. I feel like I've parred that hole far too many times. Q. How about 3 and 4 with the par-5s, what did you do today? TONY ROMO: I hit a driver and I hit a rescue, one of my better swings of the day. Because that third hole, it's a very small window, really, and you're usually hitting something pretty long in there. And I hit it right up probably about 15 feet from the flag left but I was in that fringe, about an inch in the rough. But I was able to putt it. And it almost went in. It was hanging on the edge. We stood over it for about 10 seconds and it didn't want to fall. But it was good. The same thing on 4, I made par today. Left it just short of the green, spun back and didn't get -- missed a five-footer for birdie there. Q. Nine-point lead going into tomorrow; you must feel pretty confident? TONY ROMO: Yeah, golf can humble you very quickly. So I know that. Just keep doing what you're doing. You're going to miss putts. I think the key is not to really get too emotionally invested in every putt that you make because if you play the right shot, you map it out before you ever tee off and you just stick with your game plan and then execute the shot. If you're hitting it well enough, you'll have enough looks, something will go in. Q. I think over the 30 years we've only had a few wire-to-wire winners. Billy Tolliver had 33, 33 one year and was just killing everybody. And Wagner did it and Rhoden. So once every 10 years? TONY ROMO: I like it. We'll try to go less than that hopefully next time. Q. Tony, are you going to dress like Tiger again tomorrow? TONY ROMO: No. I told him only gets one day. (Laughter). Q. 26 day one, 25 more today. How have you been able to play so consistently? TONY ROMO: It's just ball-striking. When I leave the course, I'm always just like, gosh, you feel like you should have made four or five more birdies. But I think with the way I'm hitting it, I'm consistently putting myself in position to have enough looks that you're going to make a few of them. That's really been the key this week is just being able to control your ball. You want to hit it further off the tee, we're going to hit a little trap draw. You want to hit it softer into a flag to a front flag, you'll hit it with a little release under. So just those little things are key to getting around pin high and getting yourself into position to gain the extra yards while still being smart. Q. On the back nine, you had a bogey on 13 and then a double on 14. But then you rebounded with back-to-back birdies on 15 and 16, was that huge, was that like a turning point for you? TONY ROMO: Yeah, you're going to go through adversity, especially even in 18 holes but for sure in a golf tournament. That was really probably the one little stretch right there where I felt like the momentum that -- Derek, he's playing well. He did a great job out there today. He had the opportunity he talked about it a second ago. And I had a fried egg in the bunker on 14 and he had a look for birdie from about eight to 10 feet. When I made double -- I just knew, like, it's just going to happen. You're going to have a hole. There's going to be something that doesn't go your way; you don't hit a great shot. It just happens. And then you just go right back in, mapped out 4-iron on the next hole. Don't just go grab driver because you think you need a birdie or something. I hit a good 4-iron off 15, and I hit a 60-degree to about 10 feet and made the putt. So it was just systematic, I guess, and then the same thing on the next hole making a putt. Q. What needs to happen on day three to make you back-to-back ACC champion? TONY ROMO: I try to take the same approach every day regardless. You'll look up on the 13th hole see where you're at. But until then you're going to play golf and try and birdie every hole. That's really the plan. And you do it in an intelligent way. You're not just blasting driver and hoping that lands in the right spot. But the holes you're going to hit driver on, you hit it and you trust it and you go and the holes you're laying back a little bit, you know your yardages and just get into a good groove on the range in the morning and make sure my back feels all right and we'll be good to go, hopefully. Q. You mentioned before you used the phrase "mapped it out," "mapping it out." About when does that process take place? And how intense are you before every hole as to what you have mapped out, what you might want to do, maybe change, can you walk us through your thinking on the course? Because of all the golfers that have come in, you seem to have been in my mind the most technical in your explanations and in your phrasing of what your thought process is. TONY ROMO: I appreciate it. I feel like the more you play golf, the more golf tournaments you play in, there's an emotional way that stems within a round and a tournament. I'm not doing well; I need to change something. It's like this gives you the best chance consistently over three, four days if you make a non-emotional decision. So you want to have those mapped out before you ever step on the course. An example would be on 11, the short par-4. So I've played that a number of times. You've hit soft drivers. You've laid back. You've done all these things. It was never tight enough to where we would just step on the hole and then you'd be like, okay, what does it look like today. And what I found was wherever each flag is, is where you're going to hit your shot. So if you have a front right flag you want to lay back at least probably, I want to say, 30 yards and that's if you are a good wedge player from those tougher little areas. And 60- to 80-yard shot probably gives you more birdies than anything. You put the pin in the middle bowl on the left, then now all of a sudden you can get up toward the green simply because you can miss it right. So the water on the left, you can't miss there. So that's gone. But if you put the pin on the left, you can actually stay to the right, try and draw it in. It doesn't draw enough, fine, but you can get up-and-down. Well, if you're right, when it's on a right front flag and you're trying to get there, if you don't hit the green, you're not making birdie. You can't hole that area with a shot. So if you have to execute a perfect shot to make the birdie, well, then you're not making a good decision, basically. So the first two days they've had that pin in the bowl, and I hit a rescue yesterday and drove the green and hit it up there and then today I hit the same rescue and was just short and we made birdie both days. And I think if they go back to the front right tomorrow, you'll see me lay back and hopefully that will give me a better look. Q. Of the 29 American Century champions so far, a number of them have been pitchers and quarterbacks. And of course Mardy almost in the same, a tennis player, always saying they managed the game well. Have to manage it in tennis as much as in football, quarterback or a baseball pitcher. And do you think that comes as second nature to you, bringing that to your golf game as to how you looked at an NFL game when you were playing? TONY ROMO: Yeah, I think you're trying to find any advantage to help you win. So if you can think about it, that gives you an advantage. I mean, part of it is also how you hit the golf ball, how you manage yourself. All of a sudden you're drawing it a little more today or cutting it -- Q. Wasn't it the same in football when you're throwing the ball? TONY ROMO: Yes. You don't feel perfect on this, not getting as much protection here; you're not going to wait for this route to develop until you know we're able to block, when we have a five-man protection. So things like that, you're managing yourself, you're managing the environment, the situation. But as much as you can to take the emotion of the exact situation out of it and have it mapped out, it gives you a better chance when the modes are flying around under the gun to be able to stick with your plan. And that's really, you look over days, you'll shoot better scores that way than the constant randomness to it, because you want to, believe me when you get in those modes sometimes, they're good, give me driver, but you have to hit it in one spot to be good. And it's just -- it's not the right play. Q. You just look more comfortable out here this year. You look a lot more confident than in the past. Do you think that comes from winning this event last year, or that plus playing on the regular Tour events. Peter Jacobsen mentioned that he thought it was because of the PGA events that you've been playing on. TONY ROMO: That definitely helps. But a lot of what that helped is just how I'm going to practice. So you really -- you quickly learn where your weaknesses are. And I had plenty of them. So playing there allowed me to go back and practice those a lot. And along that way, with good fundamentals and the right blueprint that you believe in, you start to kind of almost eliminate some old things I had to think about in case this would happen. Well, those aren't really in your brain anymore because you haven't done -- that shot -- you don't hit that anymore. So you're able to kind of be more confident because your misses are smaller. And I think more than anything that's why you practice so much so that way you're frustrated when you're 20 feet from the flag instead of being excited on a shot that you should be closer. So to me that's -- control of your ball, ability to hit it consistently, that's what gives you confidence. Q. Yesterday I think you used the phrase "back in the day," and you were talking about you would start out a round not so well and you would have trouble recovering and turning it around. And you seem like you're able to do that better now. And what has changed? What has allowed you to do that? TONY ROMO: Well, I mean, I know it's similar to what I said a little bit. I think when you know you're hitting like -- I feel like I've known for years the ball turned out good but I really didn't have that shot shape in my mind before I hit it. And so it's like you could play golf but it's just it's a little random, I guess you could say. And you're just working constantly. Not that you do it every time, or anything, but there's more shots that are how I'm envisioning them, more of them are going like that than they used to. And so that to me is kind of, I guess, back in the day -- we didn't have many shots, let's say that. Q. We saw that Steph was in the bleachers in the skybox behind 14. Were you aware of that? Did you see that? He actually played his shot off the AstroTurf in the skybox on the 14 green. TONY ROMO: Today? Q. Didn't know if you've ever had a shot like that in a tournament. TONY ROMO: I have actually. At Pebble Beach, I played it from the suite. But he had the same thing yesterday. And he took a drop. So he was up in the bleachers and he's like, "I could play that but I feel like that railing's in the way." I was, like, "It will look cool if you do it." (Laughter). FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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