Q. It sounds like you really don't want to talk about it but can you give us a general idea of what you're talking about?
STEWART CINK: I'm not going to be too specific because you guys don't have time for me to sit here and tell you everything.
What it basically is, it's the way fear creeps into your head when you're playing golf and the way that fear affects your confidence level. It's more than just golf but it's just your personality and your confidence in life. That's really the core of it.
A lot of people out here on TOUR that help guys from a mental standpoint would say take your fearful thoughts and your anxieties and shut them away and let your pre-shot routine take over the place in your mind where those bad thoughts were. Instead of going in that direction I've gone a step further and tried to figure out where all of it is coming from. So that's basically what I've been doing and I'm still working on it. It's not something that you have broken and it's fixed, but it's a long road of improvement and understanding.
Q. Were there times while you were going through this where, I don't know, you didn't want to step out on the golf course and play golf?
STEWART CINK: Well, a year ago, I used to come to tournaments, and I was playing poorly, I was putting poorly, driving the ball all over the place. It's really a miracle that I finished 73 on the Money List last year because I was just playing pretty bad.
Would I come to the golf tournaments and I would actually dread Thursdays. Dread Thursdays, because I had to go out there and go through all this stuff. And now, I look forward to Thursdays to the point where I don't even think there's a point -- it's just the night and day difference.
Q. Do you have a psychological coach or anything like that?
STEWART CINK: Yeah, I work with Bob Rotella and I also work with Preston Waddington, he's a -- I don't know what he is. He's a helper. (Laughter.)
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Can we go through your round. You started on 1.
STEWART CINK: My round, we're going to have to spend a lot of time talking about it because I had a lot of happenings.
I hit it close on 1, about four feet with a wedge.
Hit an 8-iron on 3 about ten feet.
Missed green on 4. Chipped it about five feet and missed it.
5, I hit it near the green, just a little pitch up the green about three feet and made that.
6, I hit the fairway bunker about ten feet and made that.
7, I almost aced it, hit a 6-iron about a foot.
9, I hit a sand wedge about 15 feet.
11 was really a key one because I made a great up-and-down for par, from over the right bunker. I had no green to work with. I hit it about four feet. That was good for momentum.
Gave all that back on 14, 3-putting from about 40, 50 feet.
Made a good save on 15 from short of the green, about a 5-footer for par there.
Another good save on 16 from left of the green which is the place you don't want to be in.
And 17, I hit a 9-iron about six feet.
18, 7-iron about ten feet.
Q. I wanted to know, you said the last two or three months you've felt your game starting to improve. Was there a point in that time where dealing with these issues of fear that you suddenly said, wow, this is -- that you kind of saw the light and things started to change and you felt like your uphill battle was maybe a little flatter from that point?
STEWART CINK: Good question. And yes, there was definitely a moment.
In Tucson this year, I was playing pretty well. I don't know what place, but I was in good shape for a good finish. I wasn't really in contention to win the tournament, but I came out on Sunday, which is the kind of situation that I would be in last year at this point and really just felt very fragile and vulnerable to make mistakes and really just shaky in general.
I came out there and I was like 7-under through -- well, I shot 6-under. I played a great round. Never really got nervous. Put myself in the top 5 or six, I think I finished. So I got up there for a good finish, which I haven't had very many of that year.
That was the point where I realized that putting this stuff into play on the golf course in pressure situations is actually something I can do. And ever since then, whenever I've been in a position for that type of an occurrence, I've really relied on it.
I'm not saying that I will be perfect, but not hanging on the result of every shot so much, it just makes me so much more comfortable playing. I realize now that 73 or 47 is not the end of my world. My wife is not going to lock me out of the house and last year it almost got that bad where I felt like I had to control everything because I just wasn't able to allow myself to shoot over par.
Q. Did what happened in the U.S. Open a couple of years back, was that a point when you were in the middle of the fear, did that cause the fear?
STEWART CINK: Well, that's something that I've talked about a lot. That actually was more of a result of my feelings, playing well and then kind of screwing up there in the middle of all the limelight, that was more of a result of the fears I was having then, something that caused it. It came from before that, something that's pretty deeply rooted and, in fact, I have not been able to find out if anything happened on the golf course specifically that might have caused it. That was more of the result of it. It didn't help it very much.
Q. You mentioned the Ryder Cup. Did that add to the tension? That's obviously a different thing, and guys talk about the pressure there; did you see that out there? Did that sort of feed what you were fighting?
STEWART CINK: Yeah, I felt like I was -- well, I was struggling with being in front of everybody and making mistakes and just feeling like a vulnerable, weak player, basically.
And so I felt like from the time they postponed the Ryder Cup, that was a year of basically being in the spotlight, which is not what I needed, at all.
I was just not looking forward to playing in the Ryder Cup at all because I was playing poorly. That's the ultimate stage in golf. To be honest, I was kind of scared of playing it.
When I got over there and actually realized that, hey, there's 12 guys on each team that are going to be going through just as much fear, probably, as I am, and I realized it's just golf. The feeling leading up to it was actually a lot worse than the nervousness once I teed it up.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Stewart, for joining us.
End of FastScripts....
