U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 18, 1996

Tiger Woods

TIGER WOODS: Impression? I guess that the golf course is extremely fast, as far as the greens go. The greens are getting very firm, very quick and with these undulations you've got to be very careful coming into the greens. But one good thing is that the fairways are ample wide, so you can use the driver.

TIGER WOODS: I'm playing pretty solid right now. Nothing great. Hopefully it will be this week, but overall I'm very pleased that my preparation ever since the Western, I've worked very hard. I've worked on a few technical things with Butch for about an hour and we solved some things that needed to be solved. And I'm striking the ball in the way I should be. I'm putting it pretty good. So hopefully everything will gel tomorrow.

TIGER WOODS: No, I live in Southern California.

TIGER WOODS: Right.

TIGER WOODS: I think every one is reachable except for 4 or 5.

TIGER WOODS: That's 619? Yeah. If I hit a good drive, I can come close. I don't know if I can get there day in and day out.

TIGER WOODS: The right bunker, I can carry it over. It's no problem. The left bunker, I'm sorry, and if I do pull the ball out I'm in the bunkers, obviously.

TIGER WOODS: That one is hard to answer. The reason being is that I never understood the historical ramifications until after I won any of my USGA titles. It's kind of interesting, because the only thing I'm here to do is try and win. That's the only thing I'm caught up in. I try to do my best, but I never understand what it actually means until the tournament is over. The last tournament, the last USGA win, took me about six months to understand what it meant to win two in a row. And then within the last couple of months, ever since the summer started, articles have been written, people have been asking me what it means to win a third. And then I started thinking I've won two, to have this opportunity. So it hit me kind of late. It's kind of interesting that way.

TIGER WOODS: The third doesn't mean anything. It's like trying to win the third U.S. Junior. Only thing I'm here to do is get into match play and take it match at a time. It's just something that I've learned that's what works, works best, not to get caught up in everything around me and what's going on.

TIGER WOODS: I think everyone should qualify, because a person could win it, see, like I did last year, and could be playing absolutely horrendous coming into this event and get an automatic seed, which would be wrong. It would be unfair to 311 other players, because of that. But if your game is fit, you'll get through the qualifying.

TIGER WOODS: Match play is much more interesting, that's for sure, because one-on-one, we don't get to play that very often until the last 9 holes of the tournament. And one-on-one tends to bring out a little different attitude, especially match hole. Stroke play when it comes down to a match play situation, you've still got to be careful in your decision making. You still can be very aggressive in match play, which I find suits my game.

TIGER WOODS: I think it's directly in your control. If you play good, I think you will win. You've just got to keep playing better than the other guy, that's all.

TIGER WOODS: I think I'll start thinking about that and actually start talking about that after this event. This is something I've geared my whole summer towards, just like I do every USGA event. I try to peak for this event. It's the biggest one at my level. I'm not a touring pro, so the U.S. Open is not my biggest event. But as junior golf, USGA was the event. It's the biggest one by far. In amateur golf it's the same way. After this tournament I'll sit down and talk to anybody about it, about my future plans.

TIGER WOODS: Right. Basically this is my level. This is where I'm at. I'm an amateur, of course. This is the event. I'm not saying that The Masters or U.S. Open or British Open are not big tournaments, but if you understand that, say a pro plays the U.S. Open, he plays in the U.S. Amateur, how would he rate the two? He would think the U.S. Open is bigger than the U.S. Amateur. That's the same way for us, because this means a lot to amateurs, just like it does to a junior to win the U.S. Junior.

TIGER WOODS: Am I?

TIGER WOODS: I'm always nervous. When I tee up on the first tee, I'll be nervous and then it will go away.

TIGER WOODS: No, it's the same.

TIGER WOODS: I think the British Open was the big one, of the three this year. I say the U.S. Open, I'm sorry. And the British Open. The U.S. Open showed me that I can play with these guys, being tied for the lead, but I still have a long way to go, to have the disaster on the finish on the first day. But the British showed I had a lot of patience. It's the first time I've played 72 holes with patience on every shot. That's something that's come hard for me to do. It's not natural. It's not natural for most 20-year-olds, but it's something I've had to learn. And I've learned it the hard way. Unfortunately, I had to learn at the U.S. Open in front of national TV and had a bunch of articles written up about me, and you guys in the media. It was awfully tough. But it was probably the greatest thing for me to learn from that. And I applied it to the British Open and there it was. I shot 7 under my last three rounds.

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, after the banquet tonight I'll go home and start thinking about the tournament. I'll start thinking about how I'm going to play tomorrow, because it's kickoff time tomorrow and it's time to get serious. Practice rounds are all fun and games. We had great matches. My last two days with Buddy and some of the guys, I've had a great time, but tomorrow it's everyone for themselves.

TIGER WOODS: How do I rate it? Very different. It's a lot like TPC the previous year. I think this is a lot more fair than the TPC. This golf course allows you to hit driver on just about every hole, if you so choose. There's going to be a penalty if you miss it, but there's options there. At TPC it was taken out of your hands a couple of times. These greens are a lot harder and a lot faster than they were down there.

TIGER WOODS: Okay. I guess my first tournament in this area was when I was 16, I believe, 15 or 16 I played in the Hogan Cup at Riverside Golf Club, I think. And I played very well. I think our team won and I won individually. I guess the next one was the U.S. Junior, I won that. And then I won at Royal Oaks, which was just across the border.