THE RYDER CUP MATCHES

September 27, 2002

Mark Calcavecchia

Tiger Woods

Q. Take me through what happened today, Mark?

MARK CALCAVECCHIA: Well, we got off to a pretty good start. We were both hitting the ball well. Obviously I'm comfortable with Tiger as a partner. And they made a lot of putts. We missed a few little ones. We were still in good position going into number one 1-all square; that's where the momentum changed.

Q. Will you talk about 11?

MARK CALCAVECCHIA: Sergio hit a driver right into a hot bunker, right dead. And I hit a bad 3-wood to the right, but it turned out to be fine. Tiger hit a good iron, but it didn't fly like he thought it would, and it came up short of the green. And Sergio hit a bad wedge 30 feet short, right of the hole. And I've got to make bogey, and I'm trying to chip it up the hill, and I left it about five feet short. It was not what I was looking for. And Lee Westwood made the putt and Tiger missed it. It looked like we were going to win the hole to go one up, and we lost it to go one down.

And then 12, Tiger missed a little one. Everybody is human. The greens are tough to putt, I don't think they're that smooth. That put us two down. And then me, I bogeyed 14, and the next thing we're three down. And we tried to make a little rally, but Sergio made a nice putt on an 8-footer for par on 16. And then they hit two good shots on 17 and birdied. And we end up losing 2-1.

In a nutshell -- I felt good out there. It makes me went to get back out and get back at it again. I'm feeling good. My swing felt good. I was happy with the way I felt. And it was just one of those things. They basically outputted all of us all day. They made a ton of putts in the morning when I was watching. And we made some putts, too, but just not quite as many as them. And that's the difference, I think.

Q. Talk alternatives about the Sergio/Lee chemistry?

MARK CALCAVECCHIA: Well, it's not hard to have chemistry with Sergio. He hits it as far as Tiger does. He drives it far, and putts great. He gets a little flashy with his buggy-whip swing, and he can hit some drives and spunky irons, but for the most part he's got a great short game. Lee kind of hit it crooked, but putted well today. He made every putt he had a chance to make.

Q. Tiger Woods on today's play, today's round?

TIGER WOODS: I thought I hit the ball well today. And I just missed two crucial putts on 11 and 12. It turned the entire momentum of the match on 11. Looked like they were making bogey and we were making par to take the one up lead, and exactly the opposite happened. And I think that's the epitome of match play, that's exactly what can happen and has happened and will happen again:

I can't remember the last time we were up after the first day. We're always trailing. But I think the great thing about what Curtis did was he got all of us out on the course. We've all played a match. And I think that's very important, to get everyone out there, experience, get the flow and get the feel of playing, and not wait too long. And the guys are nervous and anxious and wanted to play. And the rookies -- not the rookies, but the guys that haven't had that much experience, they were our backbone this week.

Q. Any surprises from your play today to who you were competing against today to the overall day?

TIGER WOODS: I guess the only surprising thing, we thought this golf course was going to be playing pretty hard, it plays difficult, and you figured if you shot 9 or 10 under par this morning you'd be all right. But it wasn't enough.

And actually it was one of the most fun matches I've ever had. I had so much fun. I had three buddies in the group, and we were all talking together the entire day.

Q. Do you think the crowd liked the atmosphere?

TIGER WOODS: I think the fact that we were out there competing and we're all good buddies. We go out to dinner. We've hung out before. And I think that's what makes it really cool. We go out and play an intense atmosphere like that, and you're trying to beat each others brains in, but you know you guys are all buddies, which is really good.

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