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CANADIAN OPEN

September 10, 2006

Victor Ciesielski

ANCASTER, ONTARIO

Q. Are you disappointed?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Extremely. I played so well this entire week, and it's just really hard to finish like this.

Q. Were you running out of gas or something?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: No, I felt good. It wears on you, but I felt good, I hit the ball good and I putted well all week. I was really looking forward to shooting some really good, kind of moving up the leaderboard instead of the other way.

Q. Do you think at some point you'll be able to look back and see the weekend as a whole as a success?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: In a couple months, yeah. Not for the next little while. I'm really hard on myself, and this is something that's going to stick with me for a while.

Q. The success you've had as a whole this entire week, it was mentally draining, I imagine; is any part of you relieved that it's over?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: No, not yet. It's been such an awesome experience. I didn't play well today, but Canada and all my fans showed me so much support, like it's been unbelievable. Just people coming out and supporting me, calling me, and it's just been awesome. I'm really excited the way it worked out, and I'm just kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't give a better show for these guys on Sunday.

Q. Are you going to make it to your first class tomorrow?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: I'm not sure. Either I'm going to be celebrating or drowning my sorrows.

Q. Do you even know where your first class is?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: No idea (laughter). I'm going to hit campus and hopefully someone will direct me.

Q. Was there a point today where you felt things took a turn?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: No. You know, we tried to stay positive all around, and it was just difficult because I hit a really good shot into 1 to start and then I felt really comfortable and I felt really good, and I was telling J.D., my caddie, when I was on the practice green, "This is the best I've felt all week putting." If I've been putting this good for the first three days, watch out. I'm going to make some bombs. It just didn't turn out to be that way.

Q. What did you learn out here this week?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: A lot of stuff. How to handle you guys, the media, how to carry yourself and what it's like out here and what it takes to make a living. 4 over par just doesn't cut it. It doesn't matter if you make the cut. You can't scrape from the bottom of the barrel. You've got to be up top and on your game, and I wasn't. It's a very eye opening experience. Even though I played pretty good and everyone thinks I played well, it's not even close to where I need to be.

Q. How has your impression of the level of play on the PGA TOUR changed from the start of the week until now?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: The level? Well, just everyone is really consistent. Like I might have strung a couple good rounds together, but these guys shoot the same as me, but it's probably not a good round for them and they probably have a lot of stuff that just went wrong out there. Well, things were clicking for me. So I need to take a couple more steps forward instead of this one today backwards.

Q. You've always been a hard worker, but does this make you want to work even harder?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Yeah, I got my first taste, right, so I'm hungry. But it's definitely going to make me work a lot harder and spend a lot more hours putting and chipping and short game stuff, on the range beating balls, and that's all you need to do, really. You just need to get more consistent.

Q. I imagine you follow the game pretty closely. 4 over here would probably win the Canadian Amateur, and yet 4 over here is kind of down there. Does that surprise you at all?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: No, not really. The level of play out here is the best in the world. You need to expect that these guys are going to shoot 65, 65, 65, 65 and you need to beat them. Even though a couple under par, I started at 3 under par today, and it's not bad; 69 for three days straight basically. It's okay, but you look at any single tournament, it doesn't matter, unless it's like the U.S. Open, scores like that aren't going to cut it.

You know, every tournament I go into, the main goal is to win, and even though this is my first PGA TOUR event, deep down inside, I wanted to put a good showing on and I wanted to make everyone proud.

Q. Standing here you don't feel you put a good showing on, at least today. You put a good showing on all week. I realize now you're disappointed.

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Well, yeah. In retrospect, it's been a great week, but just the golf side of it, me and my playing, my ball striking the last three rounds was sub par and my putting saved me, and today my ball striking was the same and putting wasn't good. This is where it leads. It opens your eyes to how essential putting is, and go from a decent putting round shooting 69 and 70 and 68 to shooting 77 in a heartbeat.

Q. I asked you at the start of the week what it would be like if you got matched up with a big name and had a big crowd following you, and you said that you don't know because you never had that happen, and now you've got Mike Weir like crowds following you around. What was that like?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: It was amazing. All my friends and all my family, Galt Country Club, everyone just supported me. It's really nice that everyone kind of took me under their wing and came out to follow me. It's been amazing. Everyone keeps saying I'm a crowd favorite. I don't know if that's true, but I just tried to put on a show and I tried to play the best golf possible and just let everyone have a good time.

Q. What will you do now?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Go to University of Waterloo and play college golf for this year, I guess, and then we'll see what happens in the winter and summer.

Q. (Inaudible.)

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: It was in the works, but it came from Cape Breton. I had a little surprise planned out. I had a jacket with 64 different types of type of plaid. It's actually in the golf bag and I was going to bring it out on the 18th green and put it on, but it didn't seem suitable after shooting 77.

Q. The pants, Ian Leggatt said he would wear those if he was in a Bad Pants Open.

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Well, they're a crowd drawer. Look at my fans out there today. I had the loudest fans out all week, so why not? Why not have a good time with it and make everyone laugh and show them that I'm having a good time, too.

Q. At this point now do you sit there and say to yourself, "I belong"?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: Far from. Maybe in the first couple days where I hit it okay and I scored well, thinking, this is probably one of my worst ball striking rounds in a long time and I still scraped it together. The first couple days, a little bit, and now you just can't do this out here. You can't shoot 77. It just doesn't work like that. If I shot 68 again and hitting it this bad, then I would have been even more hungry. Just knowing that next week if I get an exemption anywhere or if I go play anywhere or go to a tournament, I'm going to hit the ball better and I'm going to score better.

Q. Mentally to you say to yourself, "I'm close"?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: There's still a lot of work, a lot of work. These guys still have a lot of work to do on their games. It's just I don't think I expect perfection, and obviously in golf that's never going to happen. I'm going to be working this hard for the rest of my life.

Q. Did you and J.D. plan that at the end, putting the balls to the fans and stuff, or was that spontaneous?

VICTOR CIESIELSKI: We were going to have the balls in the coat pocket and then I decided that wasn't a good idea. I didn't want to make myself look like even more of a joke. We just threw some balls up and said goodbye.

End of FastScripts.

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