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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 24, 2006

Sergio Garcia

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Sergio Garcia, thanks for joining us. Good first two rounds for you, 70 and today 68, puts you in pretty good position heading into the weekend. Some opening comments.

SERGIO GARCIA: Yes, I'm very happy. I think that today was a good day to test yourself on a tight golf course on difficult conditions this afternoon. I managed to post a really nice number today, so I'm happy about that. Looking forward to hopefully doing the same thing on the weekend.

Q. Two questions: One, were the conditions a lot less than you thought they might be coming into the round with the wind and everything?

SERGIO GARCIA: Well, they definitely were this morning. When I woke up I was expecting to see quite a lot of wind out there, and it didn't look like it was blowing much this morning. I thought, you know, I was warming up, just a little breeze. It was actually asking Glenn where the wind went, where has the wind gone.

And then when we went to the putting green and it started blowing a little bit more, by the time we got to the first tee it was pumping quite hard and was blowing pretty much hard all day. Tough day, but I'm happy I got through nicely.

Q. Adam just cut his hair and the bet is now off. How do you feel about that?

SERGIO GARCIA: Beautiful. Well, how about Tim?

Q. Tim hasn't cut it yet, just Adam.

SERGIO GARCIA: Still got one to go.

Q. You didn't have the low round of the day, but in light of the fact that you did 68 in the afternoon, you have to feel like do you feel in some respects that maybe it's the best round of the day, given the conditions you had to play in versus what Stephen Ames had to play in this morning or other guys who posted rounds this morning?

SERGIO GARCIA: To tell you the truth, I really don't care if I had the best round of the day or not. The most important thing for me is to feel like I played well. I didn't do that the first three holes today.

But from the 4th hole on, I felt like I was back in my rhythm, playing well, and hitting some good shots in tough conditions.

So I guess going to your question, the most important thing for me is to feel like I was doing the right things out there, and it doesn't matter if it was the best round with the wind or not.

Q. As a followup to that, Tiger was talking about how the winds here what really poses a problem is they're swirling winds, tougher to read, that there might be another event which might have a stronger wind, but it's just like this one straight force that's always blowing the same direction. Is that what makes it harder here, because it's harder to judge what the wind is going to do?

SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, it's similar to Augusta. Both courses, because they have such big trees around the holes and the trees are quite close to the fairways, it does seem to swirl a little bit, even more if there's not a whole lot of wind. That's, I think, when it's the toughest to know what the wind is really doing.

But if it's blowing a bit harder like it was today, at least it seemed to be a little bit more consistent so you seemed to figure it out a little bit better because you can feel it better. But when it's blowing a bit softer, you might hit the tee shot straight downwind and get to the second shot and it's blowing into you off the right or something like that. It's almost total opposite.

So I think that's the beauty of these kind of courses. I'm sure it's going to be like that on the weekend.

Q. You didn't seem real happy with the way you played yesterday, weren't thrilled with

SERGIO GARCIA: I wasn't (laughing).

Q. It was pretty obvious you weren't. What dialed in for you and kind of got you

SERGIO GARCIA: Well, I was talking to my dad yesterday, and we were working a little bit on the setup, felt like my shoulders were going down a little bit and it was causing me to have a bit of trouble kind of turning through, back and through. So we worked on that a little bit.

I played pretty good 1st hole, 2nd hole misjudged the wind a little bit and managed to make a good 5. Then didn't hit a good shot on 3. But from then on, I tried to work on what we talked about and keep it nice and smooth. You know, I hit some really good shots. I hit a couple bad ones, but in this kind of weather, in these kind of conditions, as tough a golf courses as we play, it's tough to do. I was pleased to see for example, I mean, the shot on 17 today was something nice to see, but the drive on 18, more than anything, that was really good to see that I could have the confidence of aiming at the water and hit that low cut with the wind coming off the left and hit it straight down the middle. That was nice to see.

Q. What do holes like that do to your mind, 17 and 18, with all the water, the wind?

SERGIO GARCIA: If you play them well, they don't do much. If you don't play them well, they can screw you up a little bit.

Q. When you see that Augusta is going to play at 7,450 yards or so, as long and as straight as you usually hit it, do you think, "good for me"?

SERGIO GARCIA: I try to think, no matter how the course is playing or which course we're playing, hopefully good for me. I feel like when my game is on, I can play anywhere because, as you say, I'm not the longest hitter out there, but I wouldn't say I'm short. And I usually drive it fairly straight, and I can I've got a lot of different shots that I can play with. So it's not just getting there and hitting one shot, and if you're not comfortable with that shot then you're done.

That's a good thing to have, and I guess that that gives me a little bit more room to work with. Hopefully unfortunately Augusta hasn't been great to me in the past years, although I feel like I haven't played badly; things just haven't really happened. Hopefully I can get something going this year and do a little bit better.

Q. Do you feel like you left anything on the golf course today shooting 68? I know you hit a good shot in on 11 and you got fooled by the putt on 11, the par 5.

SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, but I didn't hit a good drive and it was a tough pin, too.

Q. But you hit a good third shot there?

SERGIO GARCIA: Yeah, but I still had about an 18 footer. You make some of those, but you can't make them all. I do feel like I didn't want to bogey 15, so that was a bit of a shame, but I had a nice birdie putt on 14 that I didn't make, and I had two really good opportunities on 16 for eagle and 17 for birdie. 17 I hit a great putt, and I don't know how it didn't go in, and then almost chipped in on the last.

I'm pretty happy with the way it went, mainly because I made some really good saves at the beginning and that got me going a little bit, and then on the back nine I played pretty steady.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Sergio, thanks.

End of FastScripts.

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