BARRACUDA CHAMPIONSHIP

July 13, 2022

Geoff Ogilvy

Tahoe Mountain Club

Press Conference

Q. First of all, welcome back to the TOUR. What's it like to be back out, your first start in four years out here?

GEOFF OGILVY: It's nice, yeah. I wasn't planning on being away for so long. I was kind of a bit jaded I guess and over golf a little bit a few years ago, but we wanted to move back to Australia, so we went back to Australia, and the kids have been going to school there, and it's really cool. I had planned on coming back and playing a few more, but COVID came along and we got stuck in Australia.

So here we are. This is my first time back.

Q. What are your memories from your win here? What comes to mind about your week and your win here in 2014?

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, fun week. I'd always loved coming to Reno, but I came here early in my career, and then I was getting into the Bridgestone, the Akron tournament that we used to play at Firestone for so many years in the middle and we didn't get to come. Sometimes I was at Firestone getting beaten up by how hard that golf course was kind of wishing I was at Montreux, you know.

But yeah, started coming back here a few years ago -- well, a few years after that, and great win. It was great fun. Beautiful town. Love playing at altitude. It's always sunny. Cool in the morning, warm during the day. It's like the best weather play in all year, and it's a beautiful place. What else do you need?

Q. Does the scoring format change strategy in any way, or pretty much do you feel like you're playing stroke play?

GEOFF OGILVY: I think it changes it a little bit, yeah. You definitely would tend to be on the more aggressive side. If you're adding up every shot for 72 holes you've got to avoid the train wrecks, you know.

But birdies here are more valuable than bogeys are bad. So I think you sort of lean towards the aggressive side, and maybe on a short par-4 that you might normally lay it up off the tee and have a wedge in, you might go for the green.

Eagles are very valuable. Those five-pointers are really, really valuable in this tournament. I don't think you can win it without two or three of those over the week. Maybe you can, but you've got to have a pile of birdies.

I think you're just a fraction more aggressive. You might go for a par-5 more often maybe over the water or something like that.

But it's pretty similar. You're playing golf. You try to make pars and birdies. But I think you would lean to the -- if you had a choice between conservative and aggressive, you'd usually take the aggressive in this format.

Q. How would you describe your balance between architecture and your foundation and practicing? Where is that balance on a week-to-week basis?

GEOFF OGILVY: Recently it's been pretty much all foundation and all architecture. Not a lot of golf. I played a couple of tournaments in the summer in Australia, our summer, so January, February. Was a bit rusty.

Been playing a little bit at home but mostly been doing other stuff, but the opportunity came up to come over for a few weeks and to play here and another one down the road. Yeah, I'm excited. It's good to be back. It's nice to see people I haven't seen for three, four years. This is what I did for 20 years of my life or more, so it's nice to sort of be back amongst my peers and sort of catch up with some people and get back to doing what I do.

Q. Are there any people you've particularly enjoyed conversation with, anyone you've caught up with that you haven't seen in a while?

GEOFF OGILVY: Oh, there's a bunch of people. I don't want to select anybody out. There's probably 20 or 30 people I saw yesterday that I hadn't seen for three, four years. These are people, a lot of these people I've known for my whole lifetime. Pretty exciting, fun to pop up, and I kind of snuck up under the radar really. Only sort of really put my name up here I think Friday really and sort of popped up there, so no one really knew I was coming. It's nice to catch up, caddies, players, reps, media officials, everybody. It's been fun.

Q. How do you describe what piqued your interest in architecture originally? I know you've been dabbling in it since 2010 and slowly ramped up through the years?

GEOFF OGILVY: I don't know. I mean, I grew up on the Melbourne Sand Belt like right next to Royal Melbourne, which is pretty architecturally significant and great, and then when I started traveling other places, I started wondering why everything wasn't as good as Royal Melbourne.

Got lucky to travel down to Scotland a fair bit when I was a kid -- not a kid, 16, 17, and then played a lot there as sort of a 19-, 20-year old amateur. Played a lot of amateur golf on those great links courses, and I sort of just realized how much more I enjoyed my golf on well-designed golf courses. It just sort of piqued my interest from there, and read a few books and talked to a lot of people. It's just been a passion.

I feel like it's not for everyone. I think some people go down the loving the golf swing technique side of golf and all that, and some people go down the golf course side, and I sort of went the golf course side of things rather than the golf swing side of things.

I think when you take a deep dive into anything, yeah, I'm fortunate enough that my career and my sort of playing abilities allowed me to get involved in something that I really enjoyed.

Q. How would you describe your kind of architectural philosophy?

GEOFF OGILVY: Oh, I don't know. We just try to do good golf courses. I don't know, we try to -- how long have you got? This is a book.

Q. This depends on the place and the land and --

GEOFF OGILVY: Yeah, we like strategic stuff. We don't like really punishing sort of punitive stuff. It's more like we like a bit more width than strategy, width, wide fairways, strategy, give everyone something to play. If we had a loose idea, you'd love to bring the 18 handicapper and the scratch golfer closer together. You want to make it easier for the high handicapper and harder for the scratch sort of pro sort of guy, and the great courses do that, Augusta, Pebble Beach, the Old Course where they're playing this week. Those courses are generally relatively achievable for the 18 handicapper, the sort of average golfer, but the pros really struggle and it's really tough.

I think that would be philosophically that way, but I don't know, it's a very, very broad subject.

Q. I wanted to ask about the Presidents Cup, when that came about to become an assistant captain and what you're looking forward to about Quail Hollow?

GEOFF OGILVY: Look, Presidents Cup is my favorite tournament by a mile. Loved playing in it a few times, and I've loved being an assistant. I was an assistant, sandwich carrying cart driver for Nick Price at Liberty and then last year or three years ago now at Royal Melbourne. Fantastic -- every role, everyone inside the sort of -- I think everyone inside the gates at the Presidents Cup has a good time, but inside the team room it's just fantastic. It's a great week. You get really close with families and golfers and sort of legends that you've known but not really got that close to.

You're acquaintances on the range every week, but you actually spend a week inside the same hotel and the same bus every morning and the same locker room, and you connect in a way that you can't connect at individual tournaments. So yeah, it's a special week.

Charlotte will be a great host. I know they've sold it out really quick, and the buildout is bigger than it's ever been before.

Yeah, we've always loved going to Quail Hollow and everyone has loved going to that tournament, so I imagine Presidents Cup there is going to be pretty amazing.

Q. You had mentioned you had been a little jaded with competing side of things. Where do you think the jadedness came from, and then do you feel like a little more fresh now after having not been out here for a few years?

GEOFF OGILVY: I just think it comes from -- it all adds up. I'd been sort of on the go since a late teenager traveling around playing golf, and golf is a frustrating game. It can wear you out. And when it's your job -- I know the average club golfers get frustrated, but when it's your job and you've got kids at home and you just want to be at home and you're five, six weeks in a row on the road and you miss another cut and you're sitting in a hotel room, it just gets old. All right, golf is a fun game but it's not that fun to miss cuts or finishing at the back of the field on Sunday, sort of spending more money than you're putting in the bank, and when your kids are calling you up saying I did this today and I did that today, there's better things in life than struggling and digging holes on the range.

In that sense, I think anyone who stays out here for 10, 15, 20 or so years is going to have periods where they feel like that. I had a great run. I played really well. I scratched my itch. I'd love to sort of get back amongst it and get in contention a few more times and sort of -- but I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't. I'm glad I have the opportunity to be able to do this every now and then and play a little bit. If I play a little bit more, that's great, but I'm loving being dad at home and I'm loving the architecture, and as you said, the foundation stuff we're doing with the junior golfers is really good down there.

Yeah, it's all good. Golf is just going to wear you out every now and then.

Q. If you played well enough to get into the Korn Ferry TOUR finals, would you consider playing?

GEOFF OGILVY: No, that's not my speed. I'll play when I get a chance. As I said, I'd rather -- I'm dad first now and someone who will play golf every now and then, and if it took off and I did something where I won and had a crazy exemption, that would be great. But otherwise I'm pretty content to just sort of do what I'm doing.