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BOB HOPE CHRYSLER CLASSIC

January 16, 2007

Paul Goydos

LA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA

JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thank you, Paul, for joining us for a few minutes in the media center at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Congratulations on your victory last week in Hawaii.
PAUL GOYDOS: Thank you.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: This was very nice, and now you're close to home.
PAUL GOYDOS: 120 miles, a couple hours.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: So it's nice to come back with a little victory and be close to home.
PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, I have some family and friends coming out this weekend and we're going to have hopefully a second victory party.

Q. It seemed like nobody expected you to win, but it's not like you were among that group when you stead you were stunned Sunday?
PAUL GOYDOS: Stunned in the sense that during the rounds, not necessarily stunned from the fact that I won from an overall standpoint. But I never really felt on Sunday, I got off to a slow start, I had noticed when I was on the 11 tee that the last group was playing 10; that they were 15 and 13 and I was 11. It didn't really cross my mind that maybe 13 or 14 had a chance to win.
I was just kind of playing along and made a birdie on 12 which was nice, and then got to 15 and had a putt for birdie there and there was a leaderboard there but it's behind the tree; why it did that, you would have to ask the operations. But I kind of looked over there and couldn't get a good look at it and I had a 30-footer for birdie and I made that to get to 13-under, well, this is good stuff.
16, I hit a tee shot on the green and had a good look at the leaderboard and saw I was tied for the lead at that time which shocked me. I made about a 15- or 20-footer for this for birdie to take the lead, and so when I say stunned when I won, I didn't really think about winning with the golf tournament. Maybe that's a good thing, really, until maybe 16 or 17.

Q. Unlike last year, the last event of last year?
PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, almost the opposite happened there is that I really thought I was in pretty good shape and then I was near the lead or tied for the lead and one back or something, I thought most of the day and I got to 16 and looked at the leaderboard, K.J. was like at 14-under. Well, when did that happen. I thought he was maybe 10 or 11 and not that high. So in a sense there it went the other way, wow, I guess I'm going to need a couple of birdies the last couple of holes in order to have a chance.

Q. I assume it's a little better to secure your card in the first event as opposed to the last event.
PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, people like to talk about those things. The reality is, where you finish on the Money List, whether it's No. 1, No. 80, No. 125, No. 160 which is what I was when I went into Tampa isn't necessarily in your control.
You're going to have years where you feel like you played really well and nothing good happens and you finish 125th. And you're going to have other years where maybe you don't feel as comfortable with your game but everything, you kind of dropped a few putts when it matters and you get a couple good breaks and you have a second place finish or something and you finish 80th. I don't think you should necessarily evaluate yourself based on where you finish on the Money List, per se, but how your game is going and things like that. I don't know if that makes sense or not.

Q. Based on that answer, you come in here with a tremendous boost in confidence knowing that you won the tournament, or do you just feel happy to be playing well enough to be in contention ever.
PAUL GOYDOS: We are going to -- contention two weeks in a row, I'll give you that. Every week is a bit of a stretch.
Yeah, this is how you find things out. You learn about yourself, how you deal with adversity. But you also learn about yourself, how you deal with prosperity. I think that how you handle those things -- I still have a job to do this week irrespective of what happened last week.
But I'm happy with -- good things happened and I tend to think that those tend to go if bunches, or at least I'm hoping that way. So I've got some confidence -- the confidence that you get from winning means that when you are playing well, you're actually getting something out of it. You go out and play well and finish 20th, and I did something last year, even though a 20th place finish is good, that's almost deflating when you actually play well and actually get something out of it, that's really what we're looking for. I've done that two weeks in a row, albeit ten weeks apart but it's two weeks in a row.
Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to playing well, but I understand it's not going to happen. I'm not going to show up Wednesday and there is going to be magic, I have work to do today and the rest of today and be mentally prepared to do the work tomorrow.

Q. The end of last year obviously playing very well at Tampa, did that have any impact on the way you looked at the off-season coming into this year or is it last year and this year?
PAUL GOYDOS: Obviously you evaluate your year and I was very happy with the way I finished the year. It was not just Tampa. I played pretty well at Texas and I played pretty well at 84 Lumber, so I was finishing off in a high note.
Yeah, if you would have asked me in November whether I thought that would air key over to January, I would have said I find that hard to believe, but we worked -- we actually spent some time in the off-season working. We want to see if we continue the progress we made and then see if that could carry over into January. You know, if you would have asked me before I left, I would have said no, it probably didn't carry over.
But get to go Hawaii and the golf courses in my opinion, Innisbrook and Hawaii are similar in the sense of what they take in order to be successful. Yeah, I felt pretty good starting Monday and things -- I got off to a good start on Thursday and it kind of snowballed into really good stuff on Sunday.
So I think it carried over for sure but a big part that have might have been the similarity if the golf courses.

Q. You say you don't define yourself by numbers, but this week you jumped from 133 to 39 in the World Rankings, I don't know if you think of yourself as a top 40 player.
PAUL GOYDOS: Boy, that's a pretty foreign concept. I looked at that, I actually found out -- I couldn't get on line yesterday at my house for whatever reason. Cox Communications wasn't treating me very nicely. A friend of mine said I was 39th in the world and I said, "That can't be right."
That is just a number. I don't know how they came up, maybe she might know the logarithmic function that is they use.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: I'll explain it to you after we get done.
PAUL GOYDOS: I will say that they got the No. 1 guy right, but that that it might be a bit of a crapshoot.

Q. You passed in career earnings Jack Nicklaus on Sunday. Did you know that?
PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, I did know that, but that should tell you something.
I think the funniest thing, I actually talked to John Feinstein yesterday and he mentioned the fact -- since my last win, Tiger had only managed to win 50 times, at least professional events on TOUR. I don't know how many other events.
Yeah, those numbers are really -- you start talking about the Money List, they really start getting silly. I had a better day Sunday financially than any year in my career. I look more at how I handled myself, what did I learn, that's really the things I need to take from this week and beyond.
I remember how important that stuff is. On 17 I hit it in the bunker and I had kind of a funky little bunker shot and I was pretty happy with the shot I hit and had about a 15-footer and hit an okay putt and it didn't go in. But when I won in Bay Hill, I hit it in 15 on the bunker, had a similar-length bunker shot, hit it out about 15 feet and made it at Bay Hill. Even though it didn't work out the same way, you do use those things and I actually hit a pretty good bunker shot there, it was just a difficult bunker shot. If you don't use the history as a tool you're really making a mistake.

Q. When you made bogey, did you think you had blown your chance to win and when you got to 18 and hit the stick?
PAUL GOYDOS: I think making a 30-footer on 15 and a 15- or 20-footer on 16, I figured the law of averages had caught up with me, let's go play 18 and see what happens. I caught a pretty good break hitting the flagstick on 18.
But I'm sticking with that ball was just about to grab and stop so it really didn't matter.

Q. Because of the Feinstein book, do you find, I don't mean this as disrespect to you, I don't know if journeyman is the right description, or a guy who has been around, won a couple of tournaments, obviously earned a good living, but because of the Feinstein book, do you find you are more famous than a guy who would normally be in your status? Do people know you, does the press know you and do you get more attention?
PAUL GOYDOS: Maybe among hard core golf fans who read the book.
The great story about that is that John came to me in '93, my rookie year and said, I am writing this book, he has a theory how he takes 15 players or so and follows them for the year if they are a Tour School player. Davis was one of his players, and goes through a spectrum of players. I.
Looked at him, that's great, I'll help you out any way I can, but I can't imagine that anyone is going to want to read a book about this. I can understand reading a book about Davis or something but one that's including myself and other guys, turned out to be like the No. 1 selling sports book of all time; I'm not a literary agent.
John would probably be able to answer that question a little better because people generally don't come up and talk to me about the book too much anymore, maybe every once in awhile. That book created, I don't know if a cult following is the correct word but there are a group of people that, yeah, do follow my career who I have no idea who they are because of that book, there's no question.

Q. Has your life as a single dad stabilized now, everything cool?
PAUL GOYDOS: I don't think those words can even possibly go in the same sentence, single dad, stabilized; I don't think those sentence were ever used in the same sentence once in the history of the world.
Thing are good. Kids are good. They are coming out this week, going to miss some school, but they are doing real well and enjoying their time in high school and things are good.

Q. Did they tell you they were going to the mall after you won on Sunday?
PAUL GOYDOS: No. Luckily, that's the advantage of winning in Hawaii; it's too late. I got home by 8:00 the next morning, so I had that in control. They did go to the mall yesterday, though. How about that, they did go to the mall now that you said that.

Q. Have you been in the Bob Hope Chrysler before?
PAUL GOYDOS: This is probably, I don't know what number it is, it's probably my 12th event here.
Being a southern California native, I look at this event as probably one of the events I look forward to as much as any on Tour. I can remember when I was in TOUR school begging, I want to say Mr. Milthorpe, for a sponsor exemption. Yeah, I think this is one of the -- for a southern California guy, maybe one of the most important events we play.
Beautiful, thanks guys.
JOAN vT ALEXANDER: Thanks for your time.

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