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WGC ACCENTURE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIPFebruary 23, 2006Chris DiMarcoCARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Chris, for joining us for a few minutes, 6 & 5. Must have played well out there today. CHRIS DiMARCO: I did. It was one of those I think this is the first time I've ever done that to somebody, so it was nice. He wasn't feeling real good, and he made a few bogeys early to help me out. None of us did much on the front. I made birdie on 9 to go 3 up. We hit it close on 10. I made it first and he missed it; I was 4 up. We both birdied 11. On 13 I hit it in there like three feet, straight up the hill to get it right of the hill to make bogey. And any win is a good win. And I definitely played a lot better today than yesterday. I did not hit it in the rough once today. And that's the key out here. I hit a lot of really, really quality drivers, and kept putting myself in play, and not putting myself in bogey positions. Q. Who did you think you were, David Toms? That's the kind of day CHRIS DiMARCO: I saw enough of that last year, trust me. No, have you heard the motto, "these guys are good"? There it is.
Q. I don't think I've ever heard that.
When you tee it up at an event like this where you've got to beat one guy at a time, do you like your chances as good or better than when you tee it up CHRIS DiMARCO: I like my chances because I know how competitive I am. And I know that it's going to be hard to play somebody as competitive as me. There might be guys that are better than me, but as far as competitiveness and never giving up and always fighting and clawing, I don't think there's too many guys that have that. I love match play. I don't know why. It took me a while. I loved it when I was an amateur. I won the Western Am. I won Monroe Invitational, which is a match play. I don't know what it is. It's you versus that person; it doesn't matter how anybody is doing. And I feel like if you can put the pressure on, one, if you have the honors by putting the ball in the fairway, and if you're hitting first on the fairway, putting it on the green and making them make a shot. It gets them out of their game. That's what I try to do. I try to take the guys I'm playing and take them out of their game. Q. Is that a case maybe not being the longest guy in the world works to your advantage? You have the opportunity to hit first and put pressure on guys? CHRIS DiMARCO: I don't know, I hit the ball by Arron all day today. I was six to eight yards ahead of him all day. I'm hitting the ball a little further, which is good. I've been working pretty hard at it, trying to get it to go a little further, because these guys are hitting it so far now. I'm definitely working out with Vijay's guy, Joey, since September, six or seven months of pretty hard training to hit the ball a little further. I've been able to do that. Q. You said you had hadn't won a match by a big score before; how does it feel? CHRIS DiMARCO: It's nice. Not having to worry about playing 14, that's always nice. And then you get to 15 and the problem is everybody is so good out here, that if you keep giving guys chances and you could be 4 up with five to play and all of a sudden you're 3 up with four to go, and now you're the one really, and they're thinking if they can make the birdie and get to two, so there was I told my caddie walking down No. 11, we were 4 up, I said, "Let's keep it going, let's get this over with." You try to get every match over with as quickly as possible. You could miss a fairway by a foot and make a bogey and the next thing you know you let somebody back in it and with three holes left you're trying to hold on. So your goal is just to try to get it over as quick as you can. Like I said, I think Arron is extremely tired emotionally from that win he had at Pebble Beach, and that's the first thing I said, "Go home and enjoy that win." He's been sick on top of it. "Don't let what happened this week take away from any of that. You won. Go home and enjoy it with your friends." Q. Is this do you play well in this tournament because you like the course, because you like match play, or is it the time of year you play well? CHRIS DiMARCO: I'm starting to really enjoy the golf course. I'm starting to I'm still cutting it a little bit off the tee, which is good for this course. A lot of holes are nice cut shots, and the holes that aren't, the wind kind of helps it go that way. Like 10, you hit it over the bunker and it cuts back into the fairway because of the wind. It's starting to fit my irons well. The less players on them, the better they're going to be. Today they were perfect. You don't have to worry about it bouncing around, like last week in LA or Poppy Hills or anything like that. These greens are pure; they're fast and smooth. Q. Is this one of those where you would have loved to play in a stroke play tournament, because it fits your eye? CHRIS DiMARCO: Not yesterday. You never know. It's the kind of course, like I said, my mentality going into the match is not stroke play; it's total match play. You never know. You might hit some shots that you normally wouldn't do in stroke play. Sometimes the scores are a little not necessarily indicative of what actually you would have done. Q. I came in a little late; I don't know if you talked about it. Arron didn't look like he knew the match was over? CHRIS DiMARCO: He said, "I think that's it; is that it?" And I said, "Yeah, that's it." So it went quick. What happened was, it was a pretty close match, really. Probably the putt of the match to me, I hit it right of the green on 8, and almost down by the water and I hit a chip shot to about six or seven feet and had a good left to righter; I aimed it about a cup out. I made that putt to stay 2 up. And that was a big momentum putt going in. And I birdied the last five holes. Anytime somebody can do that you know, and he made one birdie in that stretch. He kind of ran into me playing some really good golf and I think he was overtired from the week. Q. You talked about telling Arron to go home and enjoy his win. Did you have an opportunity to actually enjoy yours? CHRIS DiMARCO: Oh, yeah. I took a week off after Abu Dhabi. I had a really good week. Q. Can you elaborate more than that? CHRIS DiMARCO: I think we got through at least one keg, and I think we were on to the next one before I had to leave again. Q. The second question, I came in when you were talking about distance and length. I don't know if you answered this, but have you done anything equipment wise? CHRIS DiMARCO: Nothing equipment wise, just, like I said, I've just done a lot of core work, a lot of flexibility, trying to get stronger in the positions of the golf swing, basically. A lot of resistance through my swing and stuff. It's just making me stronger, and stretching is the key. Flexibility, my hips and my shoulders are so much more flexible than they used to be, and in turn I get a bigger turn. And I'm hitting I'm definitely hitting the ball a lot further than I was a year ago. Q. Some players have actually gone back to their particular companies and asked to see if they couldn't get a little more distance through some way with a longer shaft or something. Was that something that you'll look at? CHRIS DiMARCO: No, I don't know, because the longer the shaft, the crazier the shot is going to be, too. With distance you're giving up some accuracy. I feel like I'm a very good iron player, so I don't mind hitting a 6 iron instead of an 8 iron; it doesn't bother me. Q. How much time a day is your commitment? CHRIS DiMARCO: It's a good 20 minutes in the morning of stretching and just some light band work, and it's a good 45 minutes to an hour every afternoon, every day that he's here. Joan is laughing, because she knows I was not like that eight months ago. It's hard, too, because I want to go back and lay in bed and watch golf. I will do that, but come 2:00 or 3:00 I'll go do my workout. Q. You obviously had a very good year; a lot of times changes CHRIS DiMARCO: I felt like I know Augusta was changing their course and getting it longer, and I felt like it was the courses are not getting any shorter. I could not hit the ball average 279, 280 and compete out here still. So I needed to get eight to ten more yards somehow. It makes a big difference. Q. Did you do anything before, stretching wise? CHRIS DiMARCO: No. Zero. Q. It's funny, because Tiger has been around a long time doing it, and everybody different people started doing it different times. Why did it take you so long to do it? CHRIS DiMARCO: Stubborn, quite honestly, stubborn. People telling me I should do it. I guess I matured finally. Took me 37 years, but I guess I got there. Q. They stopped telling you to do it and you did it? CHRIS DiMARCO: No, my wife has been on me for eight years to work out. And it was just the fact that I don't know, you know what, and now it's great. It's part of her life and she loves it a lot. It's great. It's something we have in common now. Q. What was the first week of that like? CHRIS DiMARCO: It still sucks, I don't really enjoy it. I'm not a crazy psycho like a lot of people that actually love it. I don't love it; I do it because I know it's helping and that's it. Q. You could be a sportswriter. CHRIS DiMARCO: I'm telling you. Q. Was there a tournament or a series of tournaments or anything particularly that switched the light on and said, okay, I'm going to do it now? CHRIS DiMARCO: I think Augusta. I think hearing that they were changing the course and going I feel like that, as majors go, is probably my best chance to win, if they're going to add 300 or 400 yards, I have to do something. Obviously the greens are so fast, and I love that. The faster these get here, I love that, too. I think that has a lot to do with it. Augusta National being so close there the last few years and having a chance to win was certainly a part of it. Q. When you do these things, you want to find positive reinforcement in it. Was Abu Dhabi a direct result of it or was it positive reinforcement after it? CHRIS DiMARCO: It was positive. Vijay was there, and so was Joey, so I got to work out every day. That was the first tournament for me. I hadn't seen them since Tiger's tournament out in LA. It was a good month and a half. I was very stiff the first time he stretched me. It was nice to get that back in. It definitely helps. |
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