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FUNAI CLASSIC AT THE WALT DISNEY WORLD RESORT

October 22, 2006

Troy Matteson

LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA: Final Round

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Troy Matteson, thank you for joining us here. You're tied for second this week at the Funai Classic. Maybe some opening comments on a good week. Tough to follow up a victory, but you did the next best thing.

TROY MATTESON: This has been a super week for me, a lot of family in town. It's just been a great fun week, coming to Disney world. All the players love coming here. We have two great golf courses. I feel lucky to be here and play well again. For me, 21 under, that's a pretty good score in my book.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Questions?

Q. Talk a little bit about playing with Joe Durant.

TROY MATTESON: I was hoping you would ask that. Joe, he played really great golf all day. He didn't make many mistakes. The only real mistake I recall him making was the shot on 15. It wasn't that far off because that green is very narrow when you're trying to hit that upper portion of it.

Joe, I got a chance to play with him earlier this year in Hawaii in a practice round, a super nice guy. Probably one of the nicest guys I've ever met. Just a true professional's professional. Just a veteran in all senses of the word. He was very machine like today. That's kind of the way he hits the ball. He's known for being a ball striker and he definitely displayed it today. And he putts it really well too. He put the total package together today. A fun guy to play with. Couldn't have drawn a better pairing for my last round. I can't say enough positives about Joe.

Q. This is the guy who leads the TOUR in fairways and 13th in greens in reg. I guess when you fall behind, the onus is going to be on you because he's the not going to help you out much by blasting one into the gator ponds.

TROY MATTESON: I'm never looking for anybody to make a mistake. I wish I could go back and hit 3 wood into 14, onto the green. We laid up. That was really my last opportunity to maybe snatch one right there. But you definitely, a guy like that is definitely not going to make mistakes. If he does, it might be a bogey, and that's it. Joe pretty much played flawless golf in my book today, and my hat is off to him. It's a great round.

Q. Why did you just try to lay up?

TROY MATTESON: I don't know. I will be kicking myself for that one. You know, I would have liked to have known if I could have pulled that one off or not. We had 248 yards to clear the water and we had I guess that gives us about 257 front or something like that. It was a doable shot, I just really didn't remember if the green sloped away from the front bunker or was fairly flat. Like I said, if I put it in the front bunker, which is not that hard of a shot to hit, you can make a pretty easy up and down, but that was probably the only shot, the only decision I wish I could have gone back and replayed.

Other than that, like I said, Joe has been playing really well. He finished second in Mississippi and was in a playoff, and gosh, went through four holes and hung in there. He's been knocking at the door, and I'm really glad he won because he deserves it.

Q. Where did you feel like he sort of wrested control? Was it when he laid up on that drivable par 4 and tossed that wedge down the chimney to about two feet? That sort of threw the pressure back on you. You were green side and now you've got to get it up and down. It seemed like there was that stretch of birdies there where it was keeping you at arm's length no matter what. You couldn't make the ground up.

TROY MATTESON: For me, out there, obviously every birdie I made, he made a birdie to match, and he would make one more for every couple. He just kept applying pressure all day. Sooner or later a guy like that is going to run away. For him to get a 2 or 3 shot lead, that's all he really needs. He's just not going to make a mistake coming down the stretch there.

Aside from 17, there's not that many really tight holes. His drive on 17 wasn't that bad. Like I said yesterday, he probably hit that ball four yards right of my ball and he's in the rough. He hits it four yards left of my ball and he's in the hazard. It's a very tight driving hole and he did very well with the situation. Like I said, that guy is just not going to make mistakes, if he's 2 up, you need to find three birdies.

Q. What was your comfort level out there today? How would you compare it to a week ago?

TROY MATTESON: I was definitely more relaxed today. You know, it's just after you get the first one, you do learn a little something from it. You learn to play under that pressure. I was very proud we came out today and birdied the first hole right out of the gate. It showed that right from the start we were ready to play, and we weren't terribly nervous.

You're always nervous on the first tee, everybody does it, but definitely more comfortable. There weren't as many worries going on in my head this week obviously, so I think that helped. It was a really fun day. Any time you can get in the last group and you have got any shot at winning a tournament, that's all you can ask for.

Q. You had mentioned self effacingly yesterday that you had 120 minutes to think about the 54 hole lead in Vegas and you had to sleep on it last night. How did that go? Were you actually able to get any decent rack time or was it tossing and turning and sort of your real first marked man experience today?

TROY MATTESON: It was fine. It wasn't too bad. Had it been a four or five shot lead, something big, that probably would have been a little tougher. I knew coming into today, the same thing I said yesterday, it's going to be a horse race.

Lickliter, he shoots 10 under. And I said last night somebody is going to shoot 10 under. And obviously somebody did. But it wasn't too bad. I slept until about 8:00 this morning. For me, with an afternoon tee time, one of the things I face, I get up early in the morning and what do I do with my time. I have gone to the golf course and putted and chipped and went back. I found out that didn't work very well, so I try to occupy my time. I think the challenge there is whenever you have the lead, you just have some things racing around in your head. It went pretty good.

Q. You talked about Lickliter. Could you guys see the scoreboard, that there was somebody out there doing it? When you went to the first tee, he had already played nine holes.

TROY MATTESON: I think I looked really late in the round, and it pretty much didn't matter. I knew where Joe stood. It didn't really affect me personally, but to see that 10 up there, that was a pretty good round considering some of the pins today. You have a tough pin on 2. You have got a tough pin on it's a par 5, but you have a tough pin on 4 because there's a lot of grain work in there. You have a got a tough pin on 6. You had a lot of tucked pins today. And that's a great round. That's a hell of a round.

Q. You didn't birdie 4. I saw you hit the approach. What happened there? Did it bleed off the back side?

TROY MATTESON: I hit a pretty good 3 iron about 230 and I landed it about two yards past the hole. And I had kind of counted on landing it maybe five or six short of the hole. I just hit too good of a shot. I had a good chip. It kind of burned the hole, but it was coming in a little too hot. And then I missed a short difficult putt.

I had a putt that was probably three and a half feet that was a cup out. Like I said, that's the only thing you want to make sure with your third shot there, that it gets real close.

Q. What did you do to kill time?

TROY MATTESON: I watched a movie. I watched two movies. I watched The Rookie, was the last one I watched. It's just inspiring. We kind of grilled out. We had lunch, grilled out, because we have our RV here, and just kind of milled around.

Q. Where are you parked?

TROY MATTESON: Fort Wilderness. Everybody is there, Davis, the Goves, us, Kent Jones, Dawsons. A lot of us RV from place to place.

Q. Davis has that sweet million dollar rig.

TROY MATTESON: He's doing all right. My first house wouldn't be as expensive as his rig.

Q. After last week and after this week, can you upgrade the RV a little now?

TROY MATTESON: We kind of already did that. I went through that whole I bought two RVs within three or four months of each other, all half a million. I'm not real happy with the RV companies. I'm happy with the one I'm with now. Two in one year is enough for us right now.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Troy, thanks.

End of FastScripts.

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