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THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP

November 5, 2005

Bart Bryant

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Bart Bryant, thanks for joining us here at the TOUR Championship presented by Coca Cola. You're also the winner of this week's Crestor Charity Challenge. Thanks to Crestor and the TOUR Championship, $50,000 will be donated in your name to Children's Health Care of Atlanta, and an additional $50,000 will be donated to a health care related charity of your choice, so congratulations.

So far a three shot lead over Retief heading into the final round. Would you like to start with some opening comments.

BART BRYANT: It was a lot of fun (laughter).

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Talk about your round today playing with Retief.

BART BRYANT: I played well, I really did. I hit the ball solid all day. The only thing I did poorly was hit a couple of just terrible bunker shots earlier in the back nine, but making it on 18, that kind of evened out. That was pretty cool.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Talk about just what your expectations are headed into the final round, a three shot lead. You've held the lead heading into the final round twice in your career and you closed both times. Pretty spectacular fashion at the Memorial. Maybe just talk about tomorrow.

BART BRYANT: Well, I mean, I don't know how comfortable I'm going to feel, even though I've been there a couple times. I know there's some great players. I guess you've got the No. 1 ranked player in the world and No. 4 ranked player in the world right on my tail. I know I'm going to have to go out and play good tomorrow. It's not going to be given to me. I'm going to have to shoot a good round. I'll have to do the same thing I've been doing the last three days, which is to get the ball in the short grass, and from there the fairways are in such good shape that you can hit some good iron shots, so I feel like the key for me tomorrow, again, will be hitting the ball in the short grass and I'll have to make some birdies and I'll have to shoot a good score to win this thing.

Q. Would you just take us through the bunker shot on 18, what kind of lie you had?

BART BRYANT: Yeah, I had a perfect lie, a little bit of an upslope. Honestly it's hard to get a better bunker shot than I had. If it had been five or six feet back it would have been a tough bunker shot, but because I was on the upslope it was a pretty routine bunker shot. But because of the previous two I had hit, I wasn't too comfortable, but luckily it came off as planned, and if it hadn't hit the pin it might have gone four or five feet by. That was a really nice way to finish.

Q. How long was the bunker shot?

BART BRYANT: It was probably 25 or 30 feet. It wasn't real far from the pin.

Q. Talk about getting the balls right on top of each other in the bunker. How unusual is that?

BART BRYANT: It doesn't happen that often but it happens occasionally. It's kind of funny because it happened on the last hole and folks were kind of laughing about it. It happens occasionally. We knew what was to be done but it's nice to have a rules official there to go through the process and make sure everything is kosher.

Q. You mentioned trying to manage your emotions through the week since you've been atop the leaderboard the whole time, in a share of the lead and leading out right? How has that been going as far as being the marked man? Are you a little squirrelly?

BART BRYANT: Maybe a little squirrelly. For some reason I had mentioned this in one interview, but it almost felt like yesterday was the last day of the tournament, I don't know why. It was just different. But today sort of felt like the third day of the golf tournament, so I don't know what tomorrow is going to feel like. Does that answer that question?

Q. Can you briefly go over your you had two elbow surgeries; is that correct?

BART BRYANT: I had a left exterior, a torn tendon, and then a couple years after that that was around 2000. And then I had a right elbow surgery, and I had a torn muscle and they relocated a nerve. Both of them were very successful and both of them were about five months out. But both of them are doing extremely well. I'm very pleased with that.

Q. Did you ever miss an entire season?

BART BRYANT: No, I didn't. In 1992 when I had my left rotator cuff surgery on my left shoulder, I had played about six events at the beginning of the year in pain, shouldn't have played, but at that time they didn't have any kind of medical exemption, so I tried to play in pain, and honestly I probably came back too soon at the end of the year. I ended up playing like 19 tournaments that year on the PGA TOUR. I was an exempt player that year, but I probably shouldn't have played I shouldn't have played at all at the beginning of the year, I came back too soon, but back then there was no allocation for any kind of medical exemption unless you had been on the Tour a minimum of three years and averaged in the top 100 on the Money List. It was tough back then to get any kind of medical consideration, and that changed shortly after that.

Q. The Bart Bryant rule?

BART BRYANT: I don't know. I think there was a couple names thrown in there. Mine might have been mentioned, I don't know.

Q. I read yesterday you said growing up in Mexico. You meant New Mexico?

BART BRYANT: New Mexico.

Q. After the 62 do you think honestly that maybe people expected you to fade away? Are you a surprise leader at this point in your mind?

BART BRYANT: I'm a little surprised in my mind, but I'm sure I'm a surprise in a lot of people's minds that I'm leading at this point.

Q. Do you draw on The Memorial experience going into the final round?

BART BRYANT: I'll have to draw on that, I'll have to draw on the I had a three shot lead, as mentioned, at Texas. I'll have to draw on that. I'll have to draw on some of those final rounds of Q school when I couldn't sleep the night before and I had to go out and shoot a 1 or 2 under to get my Tour card. There's going to be a lot of experience to draw on and hopefully I can do that effectively.

Q. When Retief went up by 2 I think with the birdie on 6, had a two shot lead there, have you been around enough to know that it was no time to panic there, everything was still fine?

BART BRYANT: You know, I didn't realize he was up by two.

Q. I'll just inform you, he was up by two.

BART BRYANT: I've got it now (laughter). You know, I was just doing my own thing. I was trying not to I mean, the day before I had a five shot lead, and I guess that was gone in four holes or something. You know how fast it changes out here, so the fact that he was up by two didn't mean a whole lot at that point. If I would have been up by two, it wouldn't have meant anything, either. If somebody is up four or five tomorrow, that might mean something. But I think right now the fact that I'm up by three doesn't mean a whole lot.

Q. It's better than being up by one.

BART BRYANT: It's better than being up by one or even or being up by two.

Q. Are you and Retief running out of things to talk about now playing together two days?

BART BRYANT: Yeah, we had our three conversations, so we're kind of out of stuff to talk about. I kid, but Retief, we've talked a little bit, but he's just kind of a quiet guy and I'm a little bit quiet, too, but I like playing with him and he's a real gentleman and a great guy to play with. I thoroughly enjoy playing with him, even though we haven't talked much. I enjoy watching him. It's been pretty neat to see him hang in there the way he did. I hope I can say this and not be taken wrong, but I don't think because I played with Retief before, he's really at the top of his game, and it's amazing to see what he's done, and you've got to give him a lot of credit for scoring the way he scored. I mean, that's the mark of a great champion, to do what he's been doing.

Q. Obviously there's different ways to play this course. How important has it been for you, the driving accuracy, and then you look at the two guys behind you have been all over the place? Does that surprise you?

BART BRYANT: It doesn't surprise me at all because that's kind of what they do, that they're that strong, they hit the ball that far. So they have obviously less club into the greens out of the rough. A lot of times they have a wedge or 9 or 8 iron. If I drive it in the rough I'm back there with a 4 or 5 iron and I've got no chance of hitting it on the green. I did hit it in the rough on 16 today and got a fairly good lie. You can catch some good lies out there, but it's imperative for me to hit it in the fairway. For some of the other guys, it's not so crucial.

Q. You mentioned playing with Retief. You've got him again tomorrow. If he had missed that putt on the last hole, it would be Tiger.

BART BRYANT: I don't know what Tiger shot.

Q. 67.

BART BRYANT: So he's 10.

Q. He's one shot behind Retief.

BART BRYANT: Tiger is close, so I assumed he was right there with Retief.

Q. You talked about the bunker shots earlier on the back nine. I know the one on 15. Was it a bad lie or something that you did?

BART BRYANT: No, it was great. I mean, the one on 15 was a really standard, easy, up and down for a Tour player, and I just hit a bad bunker shot. The one on $13 was a little tougher, although I think you'll see most guys handling that shot, and I didn't handle either one of them.

Q. The green slope

BART BRYANT: Yeah, but it was just not a bad shot. The green did slope, but you'll see a lot of guys pulling that off. If you look at my statistics, that's where I'm going to have to improve.

Q. Talk about pressure in golf. What's the most pressure you ever felt? Was it one of the Q school days?

BART BRYANT: Honestly it is, which surprises me because going into the last round at Texas and Memorial, I would have guessed that I was going to feel exactly like I did a couple times going into the final round of Tour school. Going into the final round of Tour school a couple times, my guts hurt so bad, I almost wanted to cash it in. I mean, I was hurting it's just a weird feeling. Maybe it's just a little bit of maturity, as well, but I didn't get quite the same feeling that I had.

It's hard to explain how hard it is going that last round at Q school, or it always was for me. So far it's been tougher than trying to go out and win a golf tournament.

Q. What's Gatesville, Texas, like, and how long did you live there? What kind of place is it?

BART BRYANT: It's a really wonderful city, as far as I can remember, a lot to do there. I moved away from there when I was two (laughter). I recall riding my tricycle down the driveway (laughter). No, I don't know. They have a women's penitentiary there. That's all I know about it.

Q. They've got a Wal Mart there now, too.

BART BRYANT: I grew up in Almogordo, New Mexico.

Q. Your dad was a minister. Were you guys pretty stable in one town?

BART BRYANT: When we moved from Gatesville I was two, two and a half, by I grew up in Almogordo. My dad pastored a church there for 18 years, so I grew up there, went to school there, and then when I went to college they moved to Rapids City, South Dakota.

Q. You mentioned that you didn't know where Tiger was, what he was shooting and you weren't sure where Retief was at one time. Are you looking in the rear view mirror, are you glancing?

BART BRYANT: I looked at the board one time on like 12 or 13, and I saw Retief and my name and then the board flipped. I don't know if I even saw I saw like Sean O'Hair shot 6 under today. I saw that. There was a couple guys it had flipped down already, so I didn't really know who was behind us. Then when I got on 17 where the scoreboard is, I looked over there and I was waiting for Retief to putt, and the scoreboard was already shut off on that hole or something. They just had the Coca Cola sign there. I was trying to get a bead on what was going on on that hole. I wasn't sure where Tiger or anybody else was. I knew that Tiger was 8 under somewhere on the front nine, but I didn't know what he had done after that.

Q. We don't hear a lot of Tour players getting out of college and moving to South Dakota. Is there a story there?

BART BRYANT: Well, I didn't move; my folks moved to South Dakota. When I got out of high school and went to college at New Mexico State, my parents moved to South Dakota. I can't see any reason for me to move to South Dakota.

Q. He was a minister?

BART BRYANT: Yes, he is.

Q. What denomination?

BART BRYANT: Southern Baptist.

Q. Did you go straight to Florida when you got out of Las Cruces?

BART BRYANT: When I got out of school, Kathy and I were married and we moved to Florida then.

Q. When did you go to The Claw and why?

BART BRYANT: You know, I've clawed it off and on quite a bit. In fact

Q. Did you use it at Memorial?

BART BRYANT: I clawed it at Memorial. That was my first week back clawing. I kind of tinkered with it at Colonial and then brought it back at Memorial. I had putted for almost a year conventionally and then the year before that I clawed it. Right now The Claw just seems to be the thing that's working so I'm kind of sticking with it.

Q. So it's been The Claw since Memorial?

BART BRYANT: For the most part. I've tried to go back to conventional, and after about three or four holes I end up going back to The Claw.

Q. Why go back to conventional?

BART BRYANT: Well, I had that good stretch there. I went conventional for almost a year and putted pretty good for a long time, and I keep thinking that I'm a more consistent putter that way, but I don't know, just for some reason right now my nerves are better and I feel better when I'm clawing.

Q. Did you claw it at Texas last year?

BART BRYANT: No.

Q. You're one and one?

BART BRYANT: That's right, one and one.

Q. They didn't get to see you in Gatesville, Texas, when you blasted out of the bunker. ABC cut off TV about two minutes before.

BART BRYANT: I'll make sure I call the mayor and inform him.

End of FastScripts.

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