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CIALIS WESTERN OPEN

July 6, 2006

Daniel Chopra

LEMONT, ILLINOIS

JOHN BUSH: We'd like to welcome Daniel Chopra into the interview room after a 5 under par 66 today. Congratulations on a nice start to the tournament.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Thank you.

JOHN BUSH: Let's just get your comments. Obviously things went well for you today.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah. Well, the last few months I've actually been struggling a little bit out on Tour as you might see by my scores, but part of the reason for that is at the beginning of the year I started playing really well, got myself in contention a number of times, and just wasn't able to close the deal on Sundays. I just felt that I was relying a lot on the rhythm of my got swing to get me through, and I felt that on Sundays when the pressure is on, the first thing that really goes is your rhythm. Everything gets a little bit faster, and it's very difficult to control and maintain that. You really need to be able to trust the mechanics of your golf swing to be able to produce consistent results.

So that is basically what I was working on the last couple months is trying to get myself technically to the point where I felt that I didn't want to rely on my rhythm as much to produce good results. You know, I just trusted it, and I've been staying with it for the last few weeks. It's starting to come around.

JOHN BUSH: You had an eagle on the 15th hole, which was your sixth hole of the day. That obviously kick started your day, but take us through your bogeys and birdies.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, my first bogey, my only bogey was on 12. It was playing very difficult today, like 220 something yards. It was straight into the wind, and being downhill you always try and figure out exactly how far the ball is going to go, and I had to hit a pretty hard 4 iron to get it there. I hit a pretty good shot just right of the middle of the green and went through the back of the green, and I had a really nice up and down pitch shot and I missed about a six foot putt. I wasn't too disappointed because of the fact that I had hit a pretty good shot. I was feeling pretty good.

Birdie on 13, I just hit a really good drive and a pitching wedge to maybe a foot, two feet.

Then the eagle, I hit a really good drive again down the middle of the fairway and a little cut 7 iron to about 20 feet left of the hole, and I made that.

JOHN BUSH: How far was the 7 iron?

DANIEL CHOPRA: I had 193 yards.

On 3, I hit a little punch 9 iron from about 140 yards to about eight feet.

And at the next, I had 150 yards, and I hit a pretty hard pitching wedge. It was downwind. That was one of the pins that was tucked quite considerably, and I was able to hit a pitching wedge in there pretty close to about five feet and made that.

7, it was actually really only my poor tee shot of the day, and I just hit it a little thin. I didn't quite carry it all the way to the fairway and got caught up in thick rough and managed to beat up on a pitching wedge and managed to get it to roll about 30 feet past the hole, and that was my one putt I made all day.

Q. Weren't you very recently at the LaSalle Bank Open, you almost won that over here on the Nationwide Tour?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yes, in 2003 at the LaSalle Bank, yes.

Q. For Chicago it's a big deal.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Yes. Actually they asked me to come in 2004. Obviously it was my first year here so I didn't get into some of the invitationals, and I had gone onto the Nationwide Tour. For those two weeks I didn't get in. It was the weeks of The Memorial and The Colonial, and I played the Nationwide events those weeks and I won them both, so there was a bit of a media story there. And the LaSalle Bank were very gracious and called me and invited me to play at the LaSalle Bank Open if I didn't get into the PGA TOUR event that was the same week in order for me to try to get my third win out of three attempts, which had never been done, to get me straight back onto the PGA TOUR with a battlefield promotion, which I was already on. It was kind of a neat situation that I was in, so it was nice of them to think of me.

Q. On a day like this when the wind is downwind on 15, does that play as a par 4 for just about everybody? Did it play that way for you? You hit a 7 iron in.

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, you've got it get it in the fairway. I mean, I hit a really good drive, too, and I'm one of the longer hitters. I don't think there will be too many players hitting even a 7 iron in there. It was downwind, and I hit a really good drive. But it's a hole that yes, you would expect to make a birdie on, but you have to nail the fairway. If you miss the fairway, you can't go for the green, and the fairway is a little bit bald, especially on the left side, so if you hit it on the left side it will run out of the fairway and then you have to lay up.

Q. If they moved the tee up 15, 20 yards which they're kicking around doing

DANIEL CHOPRA: It would be a horrible par 4. Every time they try and make a par 5 into a par 4, it winds up ruining the hole. Even the 5th hole that we play now that used to be a par 5, you look at it now and it's just out of proportion. All the cross bunkers, all the fairway bunkers, they're not even for decorative purposes. We fly them by 40 yards because they moved the tees up. You're hitting at an awkward angle in the fairway; it's part of the hole that wasn't meant to be played out of.

I think that's always a big mistake when they do that. They've already made it into a par 71 and I think that's where they should leave it. At the end of the day it's just a minus score.

But the playability of the golf course changes for the player that's playing it, so you might have a guy shooting instead of 20 under, it might be 16 under, but the scores, 68, 66, they are still going to be the same. But I just think the playability of the hole for the players changes. It's such a great golf course, why mess with it?

Q. I had a media guy tell me last night he saw you grinding on your swing, I guess, over the last two days, working on a lot of stuff. Is that accurate?

DANIEL CHOPRA: No, it's not real changes, it's just part of what I have been working on the last couple months. I'm just trying to get comfortable with it. Every day that I play, I'm getting more and more comfortable with it, I'm able to trust it more and more, and I'm not usually a guy that hits a lot of golf balls. To me practice is just a way for me to get my confidence up. As soon as I feel like I'm confident with what I'm doing, I stop hitting balls. I've just been trying to get to the point where I feel like I'm comfortable with what I'm doing.

Q. Are you surprised that nobody has gotten it to six or seven?

DANIEL CHOPRA: You know, the greens are starting to firm up, and the greens are much slower than what we would expect them to be, which I actually think if the PGA TOUR are actually doing this on purpose, I actually think it's quite a good idea because they're trying to find different ways to make the golf course more difficult and not as easy to score on. I think by varying the pace of the greens from week to week, not within the week within the week I think they should stay exactly the same speed, but ever since we played Westchester the week before the U.S. Open, the greens have been noticeably slower. We've had some rain, but usually that doesn't really affect the speed of the greens as much, and certainly not this week because the greens are quite firm now.

I think it's a good way to go if you want to force the player to become more reliant on the practice rounds, learn the practice rounds, adjust to the speed of the greens. We're kind of spoiled out here every single week. You can almost not play a practice round anymore because you know the speed of the greens. They're the same every single week. The only time you have to change is going from Bermuda to poa to bent. If you're on the same surface, you know what the speed is going to be.

So slowing them up, whether they've done it by accident or whatever, it's a good idea because it brings out the good putters because you have to adjust your feel.

Q. Could you give your take on the varying degrees of practice regimens on this Tour? On one hand, Carlos Franco doesn't hit balls, you're in the middle, Vijay hitting till dark, another extreme. It's a wide spectrum, is it not?

DANIEL CHOPRA: A lot of it has to do with your personal preference. Vijay could not possibly, I don't think, think of anything that would be more fun for him to do, so he loves doing it. Some players might want to go out and shoot some pool, play cards. Vijay loves to hit balls. He just enjoys it. So for him it's not really work. People see him and think, oh, my God, he's really working hard, but I think he really enjoys it. It's a bit of a meditation process for him. His mind is quiet and he just to himself hits balls.

Q. It's a hobby almost?

DANIEL CHOPRA: It's almost like a hobby, yeah.

I think like for myself, like I said, I hit balls until I feel like I'm confident in what I have to do, and then after that I believe that you can just hit balls until you hit a bad one, then you find out, oh, why did I hit that bad shot, and you start finding faults, go the other way. That's how it works with me, and I think a lot of players are that way. I know they'll keep hitting it well and then they hit a couple bad ones, I've got to fix it, and then they fix it again and it ebbs and flows.

It's just personal preference. I think nobody is out there hitting balls if they don't want to be out there hitting balls.

Q. Is there a norm, a median on the bell curve?

DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, it would be hard for me to tell because I'm not out there that often to really see. I only hear the people that work hard. I know Harrington hits a lot of balls and practices, and Vijay does. If you ask them because they're there all the time, they'd be able to tell you who spends the most time out there.

JOHN BUSH: Daniel, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts.

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