THE TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP PRESENTED BY DYNEGY

November 4, 2001

Mike Weir

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. It was, as I said at the beginning of the week, a little better than I expected because I haven't been playing as well as I would like. Once I got myself in contention, starting today, I felt good about it, even though today I didn't feel like I had my best stuff. I wasn't driving it particularly well. My iron shots were so-so. Some were pretty good, but my putter was really the thing that saved me today and my scrambling ability. I really scrambled well and just kind of held it together. Fantastic day. I mean, unbelievable finish to the year and kind of the same as last year, really.

MIKE WEIR: Well, I really don't have an explanation for it. But I think I was playing better at the beginning of this year. Even though I didn't win, I had a couple seconds and I didn't win, but I was playing better. As I said today, my putter was as good as I could ever imagine today. I really saved myself 8, 10, 12-footers for pars a number of times. And those keep your rounds going. Kind of midway through this year until now I haven't been making a lot of those. So it was good to see those putts going in. The greens were perfect out there. If you got it on the right line, it was going to run right in.

MIKE WEIR: Absolutely. Standing over that putt I knew -- I didn't know I was going to make it, but I felt like I was going to make a good stroke because I made so many of those throughout the day and I really stayed with my routine there. I just hit the putt just right, just came off right.

MIKE WEIR: It was exciting. Everybody was having fun there with the playoff. Everybody was screaming. It was a blast. That tee shot, I didn't hit a very good one in regulation, so I really needed to kind of redeem myself, I felt like, on that hole. And I just made a much better swing the first go-round, I didn't make a good swing. The second time I got in there, trusted myself a little more and just took a full rip at it and hit it perfect right down the middle. And then, as you said, we had to wait probably -- I had probably 10 minutes in between shots by the time Ernie hit his. Then we had to wait for Sergio to take his drop over there and hit his shot. And then David was next, and by the time I hit my wedge, it had to be at least 10 minutes. So that's kind of tough to do. But I stayed focused, really wanted zero in on that pin. It was 120 yards, just a nice comfortable wedge. I just wanted to take it right at the flag, which, luckily enough, it came off right.

MIKE WEIR: Sergio's chip looked really good. Then I had to wait for Ernie and David, as you said. And my mentality there was expect that one of these is going to go in. There's going to be a lot of yelling and screaming and just compose myself for that putt possibly to tie. That's kind of the mental attitude I had. So when both of them slid by the hole, I had it to win. I just -- it was a little bit different feeling, but still wanted to just do the same thing and get in there and hit a solid putt.

MIKE WEIR: Absolutely. I am playing for Canada a lot of the time, and playing for myself. But the people in Canada have been so supportive of me, and they really pull for me. There's a bunch of Canadians out there today. Not only just Canadians out there, the fans out there were fantastic to everybody. So they came out in full force, they were clapping for everybody today. He's a great gentleman, Bernhard is, I enjoyed playing with him today. He's kind of what I work for in my game, a never-die attitude. And that's what he has. And he's always done that for his whole career. Maybe kind of rubbed on off on me today because I knew going in playing with Bernhard today, that's the way he plays.

MIKE WEIR: You just -- we're talking football and you just try to distance yourself from what you're doing. And then when it's your time to play, you just kind of get back into the shot again and play it. So I was talking about the BYU Cougars, how good they're doing.

MIKE WEIR: It's coincidence because I believe -- I mean, in college I never played very well in the fall at all. I don't think I did. I had a tough time qualifying for our five-man team in college. I never played well in the fall. So it's nothing that carried on in my pro career until, as you said, the Q school in '98 and last year in Spain and this year. The Air Canada was in August, kind of later in the year. So I don't know. I'll take them anytime I can get them. Just happened to be the four tournaments I won professionally lately have happened later in the year.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. Usually, playing hockey when I was a kid by this time, hitting balls off the snow. No, it's still pretty good back there. We played as a kid. I remember playing at early November, and that was about it.

MIKE WEIR: This definitely, yeah, probably is my biggest win. The quality of field was stellar. And I don't know, I don't know if it will help me get to the next level. I hope so. I hope winning some of these bigger tournaments keeps pushing my confidence to a higher level. I feel like I can step up and compete more often up there at this level. I played at a very high level this week and, hopefully, I can do it more often.

MIKE WEIR: Putt for par was probably about 18 feet.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah, anywhere from -- it was a little downhill putt, it was five, six, seven feet. I don't know. It was a little bit left-to-right. It was just inside the left edge and broke just a little bit right. It was just downhill, dark. I just hit it, it went in.

MIKE WEIR: We would have been lucky to get one more home. We were told to be ready to play, if we didn't tie^ , at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning, was what we were going to do. So when you have an opportunity like that, you feel very lucky to make that possible, obviously. I've had chances like that before and haven't come through and I really wanted to take that opportunity because the door was open for me there and I didn't want to give -- those guys are such great players, I didn't want to give them another chance. So I was glad to see it go in.

MIKE WEIR: Well, it's a great bonus, obviously, to be playing for that kind of money. As I said, last year when I won in Spain, the million dollars, I could never imagine winning that much money. I was playing, winning an $18,000 tournament Canadian, and I was pumped for that. That was awesome. So it's just the way the game is growing now, and we have some fantastic sponsors, and it's a nice bonus. But you're still out there to win. You don't think about the money. It is great, but on that last hole on that putt it was all about winning. There was not one thought of money.

MIKE WEIR: The question was asked, and I said it did take a little time. I kind of disassociated myself from the situation. We talked about his Aggies football team, how badthey are and how good the BYU Cougars are, and then we just tried to stay patient. We knew it was going it take time. I didn't want to feel like I was ancy, and getting ready to hit the shot, I just said, "Well, when it is my turn, it's going to be my turn," and then I stepped in and did my routine.

MIKE WEIR: That was great. We couldn't follow it, and there was a loud roar. We thought it was really close. We couldn't follow it. As soon as it went over the trees, nobody saw it, David or his caddy. No one saw it. We just heard the roar. So we couldn't tell if it was five feet, and I didn't know it was 30 feet, and he hit a great putt there too.

MIKE WEIR: No, I just asked -- Ben Nelson just came over and he just mentioned it to us on his own. He just said Sergio was -- the grand stand was in his way and he's taking a drop there. So came over and he explained it to us. We didn't have to ask anything.

MIKE WEIR: I think my putting is really coming around. Obviously, this week was fantastic. And I still feel like I'm just a little too inconsistent in my ball striking. I had two really good days, the first two days, really struck it, controlled my ball flight, and then the last two days it got a little bit worse every day. Yesterday it was okay, and today was still okay, but still not where I wanted to be. Not even as good as Thursday or Friday. So I'd like to be getting better as the week goes on instead of it faltering my swing a little bit.

MIKE WEIR: The mental part was fantastic. That's always the thing that's going to hold you in tournaments is the ability to just battle off bad swings, and you kind of recover and make those 8 and 10 footers for pars when you really need to.

MIKE WEIR: Yeah. I tend to hang my shots out to the left or I hook it. So it's all a matter of one thing, really, it is my club face that gets closed and it's just really -- just a movement pattern thing that I had since I was a kid. Taking a slap shot the blade of the stick is dead closed, and I been doing that a lot longer than -- as a kid, you build these patterns, and that thing was just built in there, and that's a fault that -- everybody has their faults that they got to work on and keep working on, and that's mine, and that's something that my coach and I are really working on. Some weeks I get it pretty good and some weeks I don't.

MIKE WEIR: Well, I haven't played a whole lot, for one. And then I think through the four or five tournaments I did play after that, I had one decent finish, I think I finished 11th at Michelob. The other one is just that really inconsistent ball striking. Just a little bit of everything. Not driving it quite right, and my iron shots weren't good, I was putting mediocre, everything was just stale, and I was working really hard but just wasn't seeing the results, and finally this week started coming around a lot better.

MIKE WEIR: I wanted to be really aggressive there. I didn't make a very aggressive swing in the regulation. I felt like I kind of eased off that. It was almost like a guided swing. I was trying to get it in the fairway because I wasn't feeling very comfortable, just told myself the best way to overcome that is really to hit it hard, and just picked my spot down there. Got in there, trusted my swing and wanted to get a good aggressive swing and made a good one, and as I said, left myself just a perfect wedge yardage; it was 120 yards, just a perfect number for me.

MIKE WEIR: I thought possibly I was done. I really did. Scott was at 14, I believe, or Verplank, and had a couple holes left. And I think Sergio, right as I was coming in, he was right behind me and he had bombed a drive right down there and had, I think he told me, 106 yards in there, so that's a 50/50 chance he's probably going to make birdie there. My chances, I didn't think, were looking very good. So I was lucky to get in.

MIKE WEIR: I went to the range because I wasn't hitting it quite how I wanted to. I wanted to figure it out a little bit. Hit a few balls. Made -- probably 20 hit about 20 drivers because I knew the drive on 18 was critical. So I hit about 20 drivers, felt very good going back to the tee that I had kind of righted the ship a little bit and made a really good swing. Kind of the same swing I made on the range.

MIKE WEIR: Absolutely. I got to the range first and then I hit a few drives and then David Toms and Sergio came out and I just kind of set my back down and sat down and tried to regroup a little bit. And just kind of get some positive vibes back, really. I didn't want to thing of bogeying the last hole as a negative, I wanted to think, well, if I get in a playoff, that's a bonus. As I said, I didn't want to say that I played bad today, but I didn't, I really scrambled well. I mean 68 is about as good as I could have done. And that's the way I wanted to look at it is that 68 was a really good score for the way I played today, and I kind of held it together. I wanted to get it back mentally and get ready for the playoff.

MIKE WEIR: I really didn't. I just really wanted to execute what I was doing on 18. I wanted to hit a good drive, first of all, get that ball down the fairway, and then take it from there. I wasn't trying to think about winning, I was trying to thing about executing the shot firmly.

MIKE WEIR: He has a tremendous amount of talent, Ernie does. That's for sure. It shows you how difficult it is to win on the Tour. And he's won a bunch worldwide, that guy, and he's a great player. So it is surprising in a way, but it's not going to hold him back, I didn't think, at all. He'll be back.

MIKE WEIR: Thanks.