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THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 25, 2006

Vijay Singh

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Vijay, for joining us. I know you want to make it short so you can get back to the range. A pretty good day out there under some tough conditions, and a nice birdie on 17, one of only two.

VIJAY SINGH: Only two birdies? I thought there would be more, because in the morning there wasn't much wind.

But I played decent. I played really smart golf, if you may call it. I was very disappointed, two mistakes, one on 7 and one on 8. Good drive on 7, only had a 9 iron into the green. And a very simple pin on No. 8 and I made bogey there, hit it on the wrong side.

But apart from that I played smart, very patient golf. And you can lose a golf tournament on Saturday, so I just tried not to lose it and be right in there.

Q. You've been under the radar all week. You haven't been the leader, but you've been right there every single day. Do you like that position and will you like that even more tomorrow?

VIJAY SINGH: I like my position right now. I don't know if I was under the radar, just kept to myself, kept doing what I do normally. I was working on some parts of my game that I wasn't very happy with and I'm still working on it. So it was fun. Nobody really bothered me much, and I did my own stuff and here I am.

Q. Does it help you at all or are you getting any advantage do you think living here and getting to play it whenever you want?

VIJAY SINGH: I don't play much here, but I go around enough times to know I go to different holes and hit shots to the green, so I know where to hit it and where not to. The conditions like today, we don't really get these conditions, hard and fast greens and long roughs. When it's this windy and this cold, we never go out there.

I have a lot of friends here and my family is here, so I just I know everybody; very familiar with the surroundings, put it this way. I'd like to pull it off. This is one of the biggest tournaments we play in, and it's one of my favorites, anyway. So it's like playing at home. Well, it is playing at home.

Q. What are you doing the best right now? For three days what have you done the best?

VIJAY SINGH: I think I'm making do with what I have in my golf game. I'm not playing extremely well. I'm not playing badly, either, so I'm managing my game very well. I know what are my mistakes. I'm staying away from those things that could cause me trouble. I'm just managing my game.

Q. How many 3 woods do you hit on par 4s and 5s or drivers?

VIJAY SINGH: Drivers, I tried to hit driver on 1. I tried to hit driver on the 6th, but I really didn't need to, and on 11 and that was it. Well, I think one more, 14.

Q. So much for this course taking the strength of your game?

VIJAY SINGH: It's not a long golf course. It's one of the shortest golf courses we play on Tour. With the conditions right now getting more and more firm, you probably don't need a driver here at all. But the penalties are the small greens and angular tee shots that we have to hit. It's always at an angle. The fairways pinch in where we hit our landing areas. So it's a very tricky golf course, you might say.

Q. With it playing like this, is there more a premium on managing your game than most weeks?

VIJAY SINGH: Yeah, I think so. With the greens as small as this and the pin placements tucked away, the greens are really firm. I don't know what happened to all the rain we had yesterday, just dried out. You have to be very smart where you go to hit it. Like the pin on 14, you cannot go to the pin, you have to play to the fat side of the green. 15 is the same thing. Look at 17, for instance, you have only 123 yards to the pin. Normally you take a sand wedge and bust it. But with the water playing right there and being as fast as it is, I hit a little 9 iron. So the penalty is so severe we're just trying to stay away from making a number.

Q. Do you figure you play once a month here, just a whole 18 hole round?

VIJAY SINGH: I played, since last TPC, I think I played two rounds of golf.

Q. Complete rounds?

VIJAY SINGH: Complete rounds.

Q. Why is 17 playing so hard today, was it the crosswind or where the pin is?

VIJAY SINGH: The pin is in a I think it's the narrowest part of the green. You can hit the shot long. That's why most of the guys hit it long and try to and it's so fast. It's almost I don't think they cut the bottom part of the green there, just keep water on the green. You barely have to touch the ball and it goes four or five feet past. I think that's the reason. It's very narrow and cross winds, and gusty, too. You can hit a wedge, full blooded wedge and if the wind stops you're going to fly the green. It's only 135 to get on the green.

Q. How many visits to the driving range here since the last TPC?

VIJAY SINGH: Quite a lot (laughter).

VIJAY SINGH: 365, yeah.

End of FastScripts.

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