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SONY OPEN IN HAWAIIJanuary 12, 2007Charles Howell IIIHONOLULU, HAWAII JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Thanks for joining us after the second round of the Sony Open in Hawaii. You tied the low round of the week so far with a 63. You bogeyed your first hole but 8-under the rest of the day. An excellent day with a birdie, eagle finish. Maybe some opening comments. CHARLES HOWELL III: Today was a tough day. It was really windy. You know, early in the year, it gets amplified a little bit more with the nerves and anxiety, and having not played last week, there's a little more rust. You see a lot of the guys up near the top of the lead played last week. So any time that there's a layoff period, there's a few more nerves, a little more anxiety. I think you get a nice, windy day it amplifies it a little bit. The only thing that happened today is putting. To be fair that's one thing I spent a lot of time in the off-season working on. It's clearly one thing that if I want to compete out here on a regular basis, it nodes to get better and more consistent. You know, today it showed through a little bit. Q. You've had some very good finishes here in the past. What is it about this course that you particularly like? CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, I think the one thing about this golf course is that it forces you to stay focused the whole time around. Part of that could be because the wind is fairly consistent here from the early morning straight on through. But the golf course never allows any lapses of concentration at all. So I think that's been one thing. It's sort of helped me to stay much more so in the present on the shot at hand, not looking ahead. It's not a golf course that you look at when you first see it and think, well, I can just run over this, or here is a couple of holes here that I can take advantage of. Certainly making No. 1 and No. 13 par 4s, you've got a challenging golf course here. Historically I've always played better at courses where par is a good score. There's a lot of holes out here where par is a good score. With the wind blowing the way we've got it now, we have two reachable par 5s at 9 and 18 and that skews it a little bit. Other than those two holes, you have a lot of good holes out there with the way the wind is blowing. Q. What specifically did you do differently this year on your putting that you might not have done previously in the off-season? CHARLES HOWELL III: I would say No. 1, more time spent on it, and No. 2 was more time spent under it under someone watching me practise. So therefore, I didn't get into bad habits. So whether it was David Leadbetter or one of his assistants or my father, someone was always watching me practise; versus, hey, work on this, go do it. It was more, work on this, but I'm going to watch to make sure you do it correctly. Q. Did you go over to Nona or whatever and just sit under him and putt? CHARLES HOWELL III: We spent a lot of time at Champion's Gate, and at Isleworth as well, just those two places. And whether it's something as simple as putting alignment, whether it's setup -- whether it's setup, tempo of the stroke, it's hard for me to see those things. I would say the time spent on it is No. 1, and No. 2 is having someone watching me. Q. What do you do now for maintenance? CHARLES HOWELL III: Well, that's Jimmy's job, and Jimmy fortunately for me has a great relationship with David Leadbetter through the many years together with Nick Price. Sort of Jimmy caddying for me was a nice fit for that. So Jimmy is on board with anything that David asks me to do. Q. What is it that someone recognised that was an issue, was alignment? CHARLES HOWELL III: A combination of alignment and setup, and quite honestly, there's the pace of the stroke. You know, my bad habits is I get poppy with the putter. If you look at a -- from more recent here, Tiger Woods put to a Ben Crenshaw or a Brad Faxon, David Toms, you see a certain fluidity in the stroke back and through. There's no acceleration, there's no anything. That's one thing I've worked really hard on. We looked at a lot of video of those guys putting. Just same as on the full swing, we looked at tons and tons of video of Nick Faldo. I like to see something on video what I'm trying to do and I seem to learn it better that way. But yeah, I watched a lot of putting of David Toms and Faxon and Tiger on video. Q. Do you use anything on the putting greens? CHARLES HOWELL III: I've got a training aid I use. It's something that just goes under my arms. You've seen the old days when you had a shaft. It's something similar to that except it's bent. I hit putts with that there to keep the whole unit going together and that's something I can use on the road just to keep things topped up or maintenance if you will. Yes, I like training aids. You've all seen me come out there with some funny stuff but I think it's a good way to stay on top of things and a good way, just so where if you're gone for a three or four-week stretch and you go home, it's not way off base. You see Vijay, you see the stuff he uses. He putts an umbrella and water bottles down there. It's the same thing he's trying to do, just keep some level of consistency. Q. Shifting gears just for a second, what advice would you give to Wie at this stage? CHARLES HOWELL III: She spent two weeks in Orlando at Lead's place and I was down there for a little bit of that and watched her practise and saw her down there. I can tell that you she's got a ton of talent. That's probably the most time I've spent around her and actually watched her hit balls and stuff like that. You know, she's a heck of a player. I would just tell her to do what she wants to do. And I would tell her that she's going to be successful; she's got too much talent not to be. Just from my point of view looking at her, I would just tell her just to ask yourself: What do you want to do, and then choose that and go with it. She seems to be pretty stuck on the theme that she does want to play men's events and that's her idea. As long as that's the case and she's really in herself and that's what she wants to do, then keep going forward it. Like I said, she's too good not to be successful. She, wow, looking at her from a distance, just not really see who it is across the driving range but just watching this person hit balls, she hits it great. She's got tons of speed. Her dynamics are great. I watched some of her swing on video in slow motion and it looks great. I mean, she's 17. She's so far more advanced than so many other of us were at 17 that you just make sure you're still having fun with it. Q. Why do you think, trying to get you to analyse everything here, but it seems like her scores from age 14 at this tournament have done this. CHARLES HOWELL III: Well, I think part of that is -- part of that is expectation. You know, she's now -- when she was 14, you had a little bit of newness to it; you know, what's she going do. Q. Nothing to lose on her part. CHARLES HOWELL III: I think now she's turned professional and she's signed some nice endorsement contracts and there's a lot on top of that. She's had a growth spurt; she's what, 6-2 now, 6-3? Q. I thought it was the hat. I couldn't tell right away. CHARLES HOWELL III: You're mean. (Laughter) But she had a growth spurt. I'm not saying this in a bad way, she's put a bit of weight on; her body is changing. You know, you go through that, most of us were playing the AJGA when we went through that stuff. We definitely weren't playing the Sony Open. I mean, when we had growth spurts; and, you know, all of a sudden mom and dad aren't as smart as they used to be, you know, mom and dad are a little stupid. We went through all of that stuff in the AJGA, not the PGA TOUR. By the time you got back here, mom and dad knew what they were talking. Q. The talent and expectations that's what a lot of people said about you when you came out. Did you get to a point here recently over the last year or so where you were frustrated about your game and kind of been thinking about what you have to do and what you're doing? CHARLES HOWELL III: I think I panicked a little bit last year and quit working with David and went working with other people. Sort of as the Office Depot commercial, sort of hit the red button. I sort of went looking elsewhere. You know, it was -- during the time, it was not fun because I didn't play well at all. Played horrible, actually, through the summer. But I think looking back on it, it makes me 100% comfortable with where I am working with David and his assistants. Plus, too, I feel that I'm a little bit under the radar if you will, which is kind of nice. I see a lot of the focus in on these great young British and European players, you know, different things like that, which that's fine. My work ethic hasn't changed and my love for golf hasn't changed. To answer your question, I did get frustrated, absolutely, last year. Didn't really know if I was on the right path or not, which is why I went looking for other golf teachers. For the past, now, since the PGA, I actually, I flew -- I missed the cut at The INTERNATIONAL in Denver. Flew home overnight, got home at, you know, 5:30 or so in the morning and met Kevin Smeltz, one of David's assistants on the range at 6:45 the next morning to start back working with those guys. I think that is sort of for me where it turned around. I had missed five cuts in a row there at The INTERNATIONAL, and it was just sort of time to flip the page. I played well at the 84 Lumber and played well again at Disney towards the end of last year and worked hard in this off-season. Q. Was it the missed cuts or was it a discussion that you had with your wife, your dad or somebody that made you say, look, I need to go back to Lead? CHARLES HOWELL III: You know, the one good thing is that my dad and wife supported whatever I decided to do. And I think that they felt the frustration I felt. I think now beyond that, once I did decide to go back to Lead, then quietly, they were probably relieved. You know, my dad will stay out of it until I ask him his opinion, so I think he was quietly relieved when I did go back to see David. But I wasn't going to go back and not want to be there. I wasn't to go back as if to say my tail is tucked between my legs and I'm running back. It was a different way of, well, I'm going to go back because this is where I want to be 100%, and let just get this thing going. Does that make sense? I didn't want to go back to him for another change. I went back to him because this is where I want to be. Q. The brief time before you left him, do you feel like you were not 100% committed to what he was telling you? CHARLES HOWELL III: Well, I think he was hearing everything he was telling me and wondering what else was out there, if that makes sense. I was hearing, yes, you're telling me this, you're telling me that; this is what my results are showing, what sells out there. It's just like I said before, you're dating someone, you look around, what else is out there, you go try and it you come back. Golfers, we're funny creatures. Look on the range, you've got golf teachers from all different walks. You've got like Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett, two guys that are working with a lot of the players, had some success last year, they teach sort of the Mac O'Grady thing, if you will. You have Hank Haney; you have Butch Harmon; you've got David Leadbetter, and you've got all of these different guys out there. You can start driving yourself crazy thinking about what's out there; will that work better for me; will that work better for me. Fortunately for the vast majority of us we have club contracts or we would be trying everything across the board. One of the great things about club contracts is it keeps you focused on what you've got. There's so much information about golf now. I mean, if you could rewind it back to the days of Ben Hogan -- even Lead, for instance, has told me reckons that he was one of the first teachers to come on the practise tee with a video camera and they looked at him like he was crazy; who is this guy. Now, that's sort of standard issue. Q. Just curious, as long as you had been with Lead, which is 12 or something like that? CHARLES HOWELL III: 11. Q. How awkward was that to go a different direction, and what was it like going back? Was it a sense of saying, "I'm coming back" or a sense of saying, "Will you take me back" type of thing. CHARLES HOWELL III: I think when he left him, I think David knew No. 1 I would come back. He was extremely supportive. He didn't say one cross word about anything. He was very open. He said, "Charles, you do what you need to do." And he said, "Again, I think of you like a son. I want to see you successful. If you think you can play better under someone else, please do that." I think it was sort of a quiet compliment that the guy I went to worked under David for so many years, Brian Mogg. And then going back to David, I called him after I had missed the cut at The INTERNATIONAL in Denver. He was in England, and it was really late at night in England. It had to be one am in England, but the guy doesn't sleep. He's Batman, really. So I left a voicemail thinking, oh, I've got another day to face this. He called back, it was about 2:00 am England time. I got my 30 minutes of lecture, which is fair enough. I took it. (Laughter) And it was just fine. It was for 30 minutes you're going to hear it, and then now we're great and haven't looked back since. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't really -- I never really said I want to come back and work with you. I just sort of called him like I would any normal time. I said, "Hey David, how you doing." "Charles." And then here we go. And it's been great ever since. Q. I would love to hear the "here we go" part, but we'll save that for another year. CHARLES HOWELL III: I think it was -- oh, what did he say, it was something, you know, "Charles, well, okay, so have you learned now"? And then it was -- (laughter). Q. He didn't take the belt out or anything? CHARLES HOWELL III: No, he was in England, I was in Denver. There was a lot of water between us. No, but it was great and has been ever since. Q. Has he given you anything knew to think about since then? CHARLES HOWELL III: No, it's just been more simple. In fact, we had one thing to work on and we're going to work on this until we get it done correctly, which one of the things prior to me leaving David, which I'm sure David will tell you the same thing. We start on something, and I get that right and then do something else and I get that right and do something else and then you get this whole path going. One week we'll try this, next week it's that; versus if you look at, not to go back to him, but Vijay does the same thing every day. So our sort of running joke is, here is a drill to do and "Vijay" it. But look at the guy. What an incredible talent Vijay is. But to do what he's done past the age of 40 I think is, I mean, obviously phenomenal, but look at how he's done it. He does the same thing every single day. Q. Assuming you're progressing, which I'm assuming you are, do you think you would have progressed as well if you had never left Lead? CHARLES HOWELL III: No, I don't, because I think we probably would have been still caught in the same rut. Because something had to change and it hasn't changing on its own. No, I definitely don't think so. I don't think I would have had the end of the year I had last year if I wouldn't have left him, no, not at all. I mean, I probably would have played well a couple of weeks just based on sheer just, okay, play a lot and throw it against the wall and see what sticks and you had a nice week. There would have been no level of progression upwards, no. Q. What are your goals for the upcoming season? Is it a win? Is it a Top-30 Money List or FedExCup, whatever you want to say? CHARLES HOWELL III: Yes, I guess our goals have to double now. Well, No. 1 is the Presidents Cup. You know, I played that in 2003 with Tiger and that was the most fun and nervous I've ever been at a golf tournament for a week. My short-term goals is to get back into the Masters. I'm not qualified for that as of now. Being from Augusta, you know, nothing knew here, but I would obviously love to play that golf tournament. That means the world to me. After I obviously played extremely poor last year would love to go back and play again. But yeah, short-term goal would be getting into the Masters and long-term throughout the season would be the Presidents Cup. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Charles, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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