	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

THE PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP

March 25, 2006

Arron Oberholser

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FLORIDA

Q. You had the putt on 16 that nearly goes in or rolls ten feet. Can you just kind of walk us through the whole sequence from there until 17?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, 16 I just hit it too hard. Was lucky enough to have a good line and hit the hole, and thank God it hit the hole, bounced back. I was able to make par there.

17, I was uncomfortable, and that was probably I shouldn't have hit that club in hindsight, as it's always 20/20, but I ended up hitting that club. You know, I really didn't follow my gut there. My gut told me 8 iron with as much wind as was blowing, and I went with a 9 iron, and the 9 iron ballooned, and right when it started to balloon I knew it was in the water. So what are you going to do?

18 was just a poor swing, just made a bad swing on 18.

But I played great golf for 16 holes today, and that just goes to show you that this golf course can all you need is one poor swing under these conditions, and you're writing a 6 on the card. In my case I made a bad club choice and one poor swing and it added up to 6 6 on the last two holes. I'm not the first person that's done that, I guarantee it, and I certainly won't be the last. But you learn from it and you move on. It's not a big deal, to be very honest with you.

Q. What made you not listen to your gut on 17?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: That's a good question. I have no idea. But it won't happen again. That's for sure.

Q. Mike Weir was saying that's almost the most difficult thing in these conditions is deciding on a club and committing to it and trusting it.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Well, when I picked the 9 iron I was committed to it, but I just was committed to the wrong golf club. I'm proud of myself for committing to the club, it was just the wrong one.

I just pulled the wrong golf club. That's just the way it goes.

Q. You picked the 9, but your heart was probably thumping out of your chest?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, I was actually real calm on the 17th tee. My heart rate wasn't really racing. I was calm the whole day. The one thing, I was fighting my golf swing all day. That's the one thing that was going on. I was kind of fighting my golf swing, and because I was fighting my golf swing, I probably should have taken one more club and swung it a little easier and kept the ball down. I hit the 9 because, hell, I only had 118 to the front of the green. Most of us out here can hit a 9 iron into the wind 118 yards, and that one just I guess I caught a real bad gust, and it just upshot on me.

Q. You walk off the 18th green feeling like you got hit by a truck?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, I just made a triple and a double. I mean, I really don't feel anything, to be honest with you. I'm going to go out on the range and try to work out what I didn't have today in my golf swing, and hopefully I can piece it together and finish off a good round tomorrow. But I'm very proud of the way I played for 16 holes.

Q. How hard is it now to kind of turn around and look at it and go, "I'm only four back and I still have a chance to win this thing"?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: I think I'm five back, yeah, four or five back. You know, to be honest with you, if the conditions are like this tomorrow, it's going to be really hard to catch those guys. I can see a guy at it depends when you tee off. If the winds pick up like they did in the afternoon the guys in the morning, I looked outside my window today at the hotel and they didn't have much out there. It was pretty benign, I think. The greens were still pretty soft and you could get to the pins if you had wedges in your hands or even 7 irons in your hands, to be honest with you. But if the guys in the morning can get going and you can post that 67 or 66 tomorrow and then the winds pick up a little bit, then I can see somebody coming from back of the pack to do it.

Myself, I'm going to have to start swinging the golf club better, because right now, no, I don't feel like I can win this golf tournament tomorrow with the way I'm swinging the golf club. I'm going to have to find something on the range tonight or tomorrow morning before I tee off because I certainly kind of put it it was very patchwork today with my golf swing.

Q. With these winds like this, scale of 1 to 10, how tough are those two closing holes?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: It's a 12. Yeah, it's no contest. I mean, it's the two toughest closing holes under these conditions that we have on the Tour, tougher than Quail Hollow at Wachovia, and those, I think, are the three toughest finishing holes at a regular Tour event. I mean, this is considered a major championship, and I'll consider it that myself.

You know, it's a tough, tough test, there's no doubt, probably the toughest we have out here.

Q. You just mentioned you consider it a major championship. After the four straight birdies in the middle of the round did you feel the pressure of a major championship?

ARRON OBERHOLSER: No, not at all. I was laughing, telling jokes to my caddie, shooting the bull and acting like it was nothing, and it was. You're just out there playing golf, man. Let the TV hype it up. When we're out there playing, we're not hyping it up. It's just golf, it's just one other tournament, just another golf course and it's just another stop in 25 or 26 that you're going to play in a year, and that's the way we've got to look at it because if you hype it up and listen to what everybody else talks about the event you'd be a frantic mess the whole year and wouldn't be able to pull the club back.

Q. How many birdies in a row can you make when you're not fighting your swing? Pretty good for a guy fighting his swing.

ARRON OBERHOLSER: Who knows, maybe seven? I don't know. Like I said, I pieced it together and I trusted it, trusted it on 17, and I just pulled the wrong club.

End of FastScripts.

About ASAP Sports • FastScripts Archive • Recent Interviews • Captioning • Upcoming Events • Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297