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DEUTSCHE BANK CHAMPIONSHIP

August 30, 2006

Shaun Micheel

NORTON, MASSACHUSETTS

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Shaun Micheel, thank you for joining us here in the press room at the Deutsche Bank Championship. Played some good golf this year. Really showed your results at the PGA Championship, finishing second to Tiger Woods. Maybe just talk about that week. It was obviously a good one for you.

SHAUN MICHEEL: It was. You know, been I think a lot of good things, positive things happening for me over the last year. I mean, just some minor health issues, nothing really that is going to affect getting the ball in the hole.

You know, just nice. I've been playing a lot of golf. Just trying to play my way out of this little swing funk I got myself into last year. Was working on a couple things. Just wasn't seeing any results.

Decided to start working with someone different this year at Charlotte. That week I finished 12th, which is not a great finish, but I was fifth or sixth going into the last day. It was a tough, tough weather day. Played pretty nicely the next week at the Byron Nelson.

Basically I played some pretty good golf. There's been one round, though, this year that's kind of kept me really I think from finishing in the top five a couple of weeks. That's just been an even par round here or there. You just can't afford to shoot even par really at any round and expect to win a golf tournament.

But I had said when I was in Chicago, I felt like the golf course there was very similar to the one I saw at Oak Hill. Just the way the golf course looked, just the way that the trees were set up, the way they had the course set up, I thought the greens were extremely obviously, they were receptive, but there weren't that many undulations in the greens. They had a little bit of pitch from back to front. All of that kind of culminated in just a great feeling that I had that week.

I played some pretty good golf, too. It wasn't all because I fell in love with Oak Hill. I mean, I hit some pretty good shots, too.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Questions.

Q. Can you talk about the nature of a practice round like today, what you look to get out of it in general and specifically here?

SHAUN MICHEEL: Well, you know, I think the conditions have changed a lot. Obviously, you know, with the weather that we had, the golf course, I'm not really sure what it says on the card, if it's 7300 or 7400 yards. You know, we're all kind of hoping that it firms up a little bit. Certainly I'll kind of go out and see how the golf course is playing. The greens will be receptive.

Real, I think most of the guys are just getting here. Since we don't start till Friday, most of the guys have taken a couple days off. There will be just a little bit of rust I suppose to try to shake off.

You know, for me, any time I just play a practice round, it's basically just to kind of get out and swing and actually hit golf shots on the course. As far as I know, there weren't any changes made to the golf course for this year that I'm aware of. I think there are some coming.

But the golf course to me looks like it's in great shape. I mean, this is always one of the golf courses that we enjoy coming to play. It's exciting for all of us to be up in this market. A lot of great golf fans.

Since the Sox aren't doing very well, maybe some more people will come out and watch us play golf (laughter).

Q. How common are those swing funks and how do you keep them from driving you crazy?

SHAUN MICHEEL: I think they're fairly common. Even Tiger alludes to them. He's pretty quiet in really what he's working on. He'll mention it. Maybe he'll mention it as much as every other press conference that he does. He talks about working with his new swing coach.

I think, bottom line, when you get to be a certain age, you've played out here for so long, it's funny for me, the same things seem to plague me. You know, once you get a golf swing, you're pretty much stuck with it. A lot of my stuff, I try to go back to just simple things like my ball position, my alignment, which seems very simple. That's the very root of your golf swing.

Matt and I have worked on some technical things. Certainly posture is one of them. Alignment, ball position, I say again. You know, I work on trying to make a little bit more of a level turn. That's just the one thing I'm working on. Everybody is working on something different.

It does plague you quite a bit, though. One week you feel like you have it. In Chicago, for example, I had it. Then last week I went to Reno and I had it for two days. The other two days it was like I never played golf before.

Golf, it's different day in, day out, not necessarily week to week, but day in, day out. When you find it, when you key in on something, it will stay with you for a while.

I keep a pretty good I keep pretty good tabs on what I'm doing each and every week. After every tournament round, I write in my computer what are the good things I did that week, what are the bad things, where were my misses. I kind of keep my own stats really on kind of how my week was so I can have something to go back to.

I only started that recently. I just got sick and tired of having to call my teacher and have him tell me the same thing over and over and over. Like I said, I just do that for myself to kind of go back and reevaluate and, you know, kind of see where I stand from how I was swinging a couple months ago.

Q. How did your life change after Oak Hill? Was it something that required adjustment to? Who was your teacher?

SHAUN MICHEEL: Well, my teacher now?

Q. Yes.

SHAUN MICHEEL: His name I Matt Killen. He's a 21 year old phenom. I actually met him for the first time at LA. He's been working with Kenny Perry for about three or four years now. We went to dinner together in LA this year. We were just kind of sitting across from one another. He's pretty quiet, I'm pretty quiet. It wasn't until the next week I saw him doing Golf Academy Live that really kind of piqued my interest.

I just listened to him speak. I called my manager. I said, Who is this kid? This kid is 21 years old. He's working with some great people. Ron Green is one of the guys he's working with. There's a few guys out here that work with him. Anyway, we started working at Charlotte, which was in May.

Back to your first question. There were so many things happening to me in my life at that time. My wife was six months pregnant. My life was about to change that way. Although that wasn't really consuming me, it was more her dealing with the pregnancy and everything else.

I think the excitement level was kind of out of this world really. Over the last four or five years, I've kind of been one of those players that was finishing 100 to 125 on the Money List. For whatever reason, I was just it was just keeping me there, I wasn't able to get over that hump.

I think it took something like that to kind of really make me feel that I could play out here. I mean, I felt like I belonged a long time ago; it's just that knowing the things that you need to do to play well, and to play well at a high level, and consistently.

But the expectation level was there. It wasn't so much outside pressure. I think it was just pressure that I put on myself to perform. I actually played okay in '04. I only had one top 10, but I had finished he I made close to $1 million, finished 80th on the Money List, which is not great if you're trying to back up a major championship.

I think the most difficult part of having to try to follow up the PGA Championship was having to read about some of the things that were written. I think everybody was pretty kind to me. I lump Ben Curtis in this as well. They'd kind of written us off as one hit wonders. I never understood that. Had I won the FedEx St. Jude Classic, Stanford Financial Championship, everybody would have thought, This guy's finally worked hard enough, he's achieved a dream, he's won on the PGA TOUR. Since I won a major championship at that time, it was just like you have to back this up or you're a one hit wonder. I never did quite understand that.

I do understand that winning major championships is typically a process, one that you get on TOUR, you compete in events, maybe you win a PGA TOUR event, you get a bunch of top 10s. The majors are difficult to qualify for anyway. I'd say the PGA Championship, maybe the US Open, but probably the PGA Championship is the easiest to qualify for. If you play well, you're going to make enough money to qualify.

You know, it was just very difficult I think to try to follow up those expectations that I had for myself. Then when you read things like that, because I felt like it's a process, you keep your card, you compete in the major championships, then you finally win one. It just didn't happen that way for me or for Ben. I'm not speaking for Ben on how he felt. I think that was probably the most difficult thing for me to try to live with, so...

Q. Matt is such a phenom. Does he play? Should he be playing?

SHAUN MICHEEL: You know what, he does play. I think he played at Western Kentucky. He's been working with KP for a while now. He just started working with J.B. Holmes. It's kind of hard to teach J.B. That swing speed he's got. He just started working with him.

You know, I don't know what it is about teachers. Everyone's different. Some people you get two teachers, somebody might be telling you the exact same thing, but maybe it's the way they explain it. Not all teachers can play the game. I think that's why Lee Trevino said he never worked with a teacher. He said, I never met a teacher that can beat me.

I'm not that surly really. I really believe you need some help. Bottom line, though, is when you're on the course, it's just you and your caddie against the world really. No one can help you out there. You have to find ways to simplify what you're working on.

Like I said, I didn't go through a major swing overhaul. Look what Nick Faldo did a number of years ago when he realized, in order to compete at the level he wanted to be at, he had to totally change his golf swing. He was a much longer hitter. To think of a guy at 6'4", he only hit it 260 yards. I don't think he could play the golf courses today. I don't think he would have had as much impact today as he did in the mid to late '80s and early '90s.

He just has a way of explaining things to me in very simple terms. It's something that I can relate to. I enjoy him. He's just very enthusiastic, smiling all the time. You need to smile every now and then. I think he's brought that out in me, as well.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thank you.

SHAUN MICHEEL: Thank you.

End of FastScripts.

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