home

jobs

	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

JOHN DEERE CLASSIC

July 7, 2005

Kirk Triplett

SILVIS, ILLINOIS

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Kirk opens with a bogey free 6 under 65 today, just a couple thoughts about the round and then go through your birdies.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, the golf course is in tremendous shape. I mean, best I've ever seen it. The weather was perfect, absolutely ideal day to play golf. That's why the scores are so good, one of the reasons.

It's nice to get out there. I hit a lot of fairways, hit a lot of greens, had a lot of birdie chances, got off to a fast start, which sometimes when the course is there for the taking if you don't get off to a fast start you start pressing and things get a little out of whack. I birdied five of the first seven and that really got me off and going. I had a number of opportunities on the front and could have shot considerably lower, which I'm sure you'll hear from other players, as well.

PHIL STAMBAUGH: You just want to go through your birdies.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Started out the round on No. 10.

Made a birdie on No. 11, hit a 9 iron to about 15 I'll give you all the exact numbers, 15 feet, made the putt.

Birdied No. 12, hit another 9 iron just into the back fringe about 15, 18 feet again.

Birdied 13 no, I birdied 13, not 12.

Then I birdied 14, hit a poor drive in the right rough, hit a sand wedge just to the middle of the green, the pin was on the left right behind the bunker. I made a 50, 60 foot bomb and I was just trying to lob it up over the slope and it went in. I turned to my caddie and I said, "That's what we've been trying to do."

Next hole I hit a beautiful drive about six feet behind the hole.

Then I hit an 8 feet, the par 3, 16.

Then it slowed down considerably, two putted No. 2, hit a driver and a 4 iron and two putted for birdie there.

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Just sort of talk about your year thus far. It hasn't been one of your best.

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, I haven't played as well as I have the last five or six years. I've been battling in there around that top 50 for a number of years now, and this year I've definitely dropped off a bit, missed more cuts than I'm used to, but it's very simple. You look at my stats and I'm just not playing well. I'm missing greens and not putting well. You know, I didn't need the stats to tell me that. I'm living it. I'm out there shooting 74, 75. It's nice to get off to a nice start.

I played a little bit better this last stretch from Memphis through Congressional, the Booz Allen. I played four tournaments in a row actually started at Colonial, and I felt like I was gaining ground a little bit, playing a little bit better, then last week I played awful in Chicago, got off to a bad start, putted poorly, hit a ball out of bounds. I was very discouraged, and I worked on my game a little bit, came out here and got off to a good start. Maybe that's a lot of the battle.

Q. Does it help coming back to a place where you've had considerable success?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, there's no question. I'm comfortable at this course. I've got my name up there and some pretty good finishes here. You know, I don't necessarily have that at some of the other tournaments I haven't played as well at this year. Yeah, it does, it feels very good to be back here and it also helps knowing I've got a few weeks off after this and have a chance to regroup for the rest of the year.

Q. The top finisher here gets a spot at the British Open. Would you take that?

KIRK TRIPLETT: I don't know. I would say it would be highly unlikely. I'm the kind of guy I like to have it all planned out. I'm not a last minute golfer. That's for Duffy Waldorf. That's his thing. He's got a little deal with a company called Last Minute Golfer, so I give him a hard time.

I've been exempt for the British Open a number of times and haven't gone, then this year I decided I wanted to go and, of course, I played poorly and was not exempt, so there you have it, I got what I deserved.

Q. What is it about this course that fits with your game?

KIRK TRIPLETT: For me?

Q. Yeah.

KIRK TRIPLETT: Oh, I don't know. You have to drive your ball reasonably well, and it's not it can't be played just one way. You can play it a whole bunch of different ways. It allows I think all types of players to be competitive. I don't have necessarily that long smash. I don't know what to call it for lack of a better term, smash mouth golf. That's not my game, but it'll work out here, but you can also play kind of a controlled game and that will work out here, as well.

I think it's a wonderful course. It fits your eye very well. Any time you have a slope, the doglegs kind of follow the slope. There's a few places that it tries to lull you into doing stuff. Once in a while you get away with it but not all the time. It's a nice mix of holes. It also gives up a lot of nice scores, so you have to be prepared for that and you have to putt well. No matter how you hit it, you have to putt well to win this tournament.

Q. A good number on the board but you missed some putts on the back. Do you leave the course anxious to come back out tomorrow?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Oh, yeah, I'm thrilled. I know this is a 20 under deal and I've gotten one fourth of the way there in one day. I'm right on track. I played solid enough that I feel I can sustain it through the rest of the week.

Q. Now, we sat in here before, leader, 6, 7, 8 under, assuming it's going to get to 20 under, it never does. Do you really think it is going to be a 20 under score?

KIRK TRIPLETT: That's what you try and shoot for. If you get it to 20 under, you've got a good chance of holding the trophy. That's what you try and go after. What won last year?

Q. 16. 17 two years ago.

KIRK TRIPLETT: See, if you're 20 under, you can hit it in the lake on 18 and win.

Q. 20 under out here every week you're happy, aren't you?

How did you spend the week preparing for this?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, I came over on we came over Sunday afternoon. I missed the cut at Chicago, and just a little bit of practice on Monday and a little bit on Tuesday, drove a few bulldozers Tuesday night, Pro Am yesterday, and off we go.

Q. Were you playing some golf this week with your family?

KIRK TRIPLETT: No, my wife and kids played Wednesday out at is it Saukie? They had a good time.

Q. Can you talk to me real quick about your adoption, Tour for Adoption Foundation?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, what we do is each week out on Tour I carry a bag that says the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Dave Thomas is the founder of Wendy's restaurants. He was adopted, and also over the last decade or more, probably the country's leading advocate for adoption awareness. So what they've done is come up with a program where each week I feature a picture of a child, or more than one child. This week it's a pair of sisters from just outside of Chicago, and what we do is try and tell their story, and because it's a story you don't normally hear. People know two things about adoption, they know it takes a long time and it's really difficult to get a baby, and they know it's very expensive. Well, it's true in that particular case. What they don't know is that there's over 100,000 kids in foster care in this country today that are adoptable. I mean, they're adoptable tomorrow. You walk in there certified, say "I want to adopt a foster child," tomorrow they will match you. Little or no cost. You just don't hear that story.

So the people that are responsible for those kids and are helping those kids, they're just so busy taking care of them on a day to day basis that they don't get a chance to get out and recruit and tell that story. So we are in a unique position to talk to people like you about that and spread the word, and that's what we're trying to do.

Q. How did you get involved?

KIRK TRIPLETT: We have four kids, two of them are adopted. And about five years ago we started I played some fundraising golf tournaments, charity golf tournaments to raise money for the Dave Thomas Foundation, and as we learned more and more about the kids and about the foster care system and about adoption in general, it's just become a real passion of ours to get involved and do some of these things and promoting adoption. We're just in a very unique position to do it. People like you are talking to us, we're highly visible. We're also part of the cause. We don't just go out there talking about something that we don't know anything about. We're out there talking about something that we live every day. We did it because we wanted to have more kids, not because we were trying to save the world or make the world a better place or anything like that.

That's the great thing about adoption. It's great for the parents because they do it for their reasons, because they want to have more kids, it's great for the kids because it gives them a permanent place to call home, and it's great for the community because it takes a ton of strain off their resources.

Q. How old were your kids when you adopted them?

KIRK TRIPLETT: They were both babies but they were both from different situations, interesting situations, babies that were headed for foster care.

Q. First two were natural, were yours, right?

KIRK TRIPLETT: We have twin boys nine and we have an adopted daughter five and an adopted son three.

Q. Were you not able to have

KIRK TRIPLETT: We were not able to have more kids.

Q. What has been the reception to your participation in this?

KIRK TRIPLETT: We've been doing this for about a year and a half. Last year we had 22 kids on the bag. I think five of them were adopted. I don't know what's happened this year, but every six months or so, they update it.

Now, we're not the only ones working on behalf of these kids so it's not just because of what we do. I got off your question.

Q. No, go ahead. The success and the reaction to

KIRK TRIPLETT: Yeah, there's a tremendous network of people that are attached by adoption out there, people that have been adopted or people in their family have adopted kids and people that have adopted, people that have been adopted, and I just meet them every week, and they're all they just have this sense of bond and want to talk to you about it and tell you their story. It's just a neat thing.

15 years ago people wouldn't talk about it at all, and now it's in the forefront and it's a hot issue and it's very important. It's good.

Q. You started this when? Last year was the first year?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Last year was the first year we did this program with the Foundation. It'll have its run. It'll run for a short period of time and then it becomes old news and we can't get the coverage and stuff that we necessarily want it to do, but it's just all these little things, and people hear this big number and they want to talk about it and throw money at it and figure out how to solve it, and the only way to solve it is one kid at a time. That's what our program does, it talks about one kid at a time.

Q. Has it become more prevalent on Tour for guys to get involved with functions such as this?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Well, I think we've done it. For years we've been the entertainment at these charity fund raisers for years, and obviously we have lots of guys that have their own charities that they're involved with and do things with and run tournaments. Peter Jacobson ran a huge tournament up in Oregon, Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade, their tournament generates, I don't know, probably a million, $2 million for charity. Tom Lehman had a big one in Minneapolis, my wife and I do one for the Dave Thomas Foundation of Phoenix, the Santa Claus Classic, there is just an endless list of guys who run and are associated with these tournaments. They raise anywhere from $50,000 to $2 million in these one day events. We get our friends to play and twist their arms and that kind of thing.

You saw Greg Norman do something this year with the two presidents, George Bush and Mr. Clinton, and what did they raise, $2 million on a day that got rained out for tsunami relief.

Golf is a wonderful vehicle for that, and that's what these tournaments are all about. That's what the Drive to a Billion is all about. People are still coming to the golf course and watching the tournaments and getting involved and donating their time because they know what they do this tournament, the Birdies For Charity, $1.4 million last year in a community this size? That's incredible, absolutely incredible.

PHIL STAMBAUGH: Kirk, thanks a lot.

Q. What do you call your program?

KIRK TRIPLETT: The Tour for Adoption. There's some information on the Dave Thomas for Adoption website, and Joan has some information as well about the kids.

Q. Have you ever heard from anybody that adopted a kid last year?

KIRK TRIPLETT: Not yet, just the social workers. I haven't heard directly from any of the kids or the families. But one thing that did happen out of this was one of the first weeks where we had the big press conference, we have an adopted daughter, and she is the tenth baby that this woman had had, and the family that had adopted the three kids older than her, they contacted us and we got in touch with them. So that was kind of an interesting sidelight to the thing because we didn't know where they were or the rest of those kids were. So there's this network. It's important to keep it intact and harness the power of it and find homes for these kids. That's what we're trying to do. And make a few birdies.

End of FastScripts.

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297