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SHELL HOUSTON OPENMarch 30, 2007Stuart ApplebyJeff MaggertHUMBLE, TEXAS DOUG MILNE: Okay. Jeff Maggert, welcome. Second round 71, 6-under for the tournament. Couple of birdies. If we could just get some clubs on the birdie on the par-5 8th for starters. JEFF MAGGERT: Drove it in the fairway, went for the green in 2 with a 3-wood. Just short of the green. Not a very good chip shot and made about a 20-footer there for birdie. DOUG MILNE: How about 17? JEFF MAGGERT: Drove it in the fairway, 6-iron, probably 15, 18 feet, just on the fringe, maybe an inch off the green. DOUG MILNE: Okay. Great. How about some just general comments on the round, the course, the wind and everything involved. JEFF MAGGERT: The wind was pretty difficult. I hit the ball very well today. I had -- actually I hit the ball really close the first three holes and missed three short putts in a row starting out my round. So I was, you know, a little apprehensive. You don't want to get -- you don't want to let those get away from you, especially on a day like today. I had about a 6-footer on 1 and missed about a 3-footer -- I started on 10 so 6-footer on 10, about 3-footer on 11, another 6, 8-footer on 12. Kind of you want to get some early birdies on a day like today, and then I just played pretty steady the rest of the way, lot of the fairways and greens and made a nice putt on 17 and then had a 3-putt bogey on the second hole and then birdied 8 and made a nice par putt on 9. Made a couple putts at the end there to kind of bounce out some of the short once I missed. Q. Any surprise? 6-under is kind of -- JEFF MAGGERT: I thought someone maybe yesterday morning had a good score might break out this afternoon a little better round, certainly. You know, when it's windy, it's difficult, club selection. This course, it seems like both 9s kind of go in a circle a little bit, so you're constantly changing the wind direction every hole. Doesn't seem like we played a lot of straight downwind holes that are straight into the wind. Most of them lot of crosswinds, and this course is surrounded obviously by a lot of trees. So sometimes you're sitting down in the fairway, and you don't really get a good feel for the wind direction. So it makes club selection difficult. And the way the greens are built here, the pinable areas are pretty flat. If you're not in 15, 20 feet of the pin, you usually have some pretty difficult putts. If you're not hitting the ball close, it's difficult to putt, and I thought the pins were pretty difficult today. It seemed like they hadn't -- had the pins on the wind side of the green. In other words, you're trying to, you know, hit it in there tight to the pin, but the wind is blowing you away from the pin into the middle of the green. So you're -- you're really kind of putting the trouble into play if you're trying to hit the ball close to the hole. Q. So is that why guys are raving about how the greens are, yet guys aren't making a lot of long putts? JEFF MAGGERT: If you've got a 30-footer here, chances are you're coming up over a mound or a little spine in the green. So, you know, the greens are fabulous. There's no excuse for the short putts. Certainly if you're in there 8, 10 feet, you definitely have a lot of opportunities to make those putts. I think the only other greens that I've seen better -- I mean, these are bermuda grass overseeded obviously with the winter grass, is probably TPC at Sawgrass for the Players Championship, same type of situation. But normally we played in tournament a few weeks later, so the greens are more in a transition period. Certainly this year they're fabulous. Q. Are you surprised 6-under is tied for the lead after two rounds? JEFF MAGGERT: Little bit. It seemed like there's a lot of 6s and 5s yesterday, so I kind of expected someone to kind of break out, but it's tough. This course doesn't yield a lot of birdies. You want to take advantage of the par-5s, and, you know, in windy conditions, you're going to make a few bogies, and hopefully you can make a few birdies to go with them. Q. How would you -- sum up with what this year has been for you so far. JEFF MAGGERT: Not much of a year. Just getting started with me obviously with the broken rib right before the Mercedes Championship. You know, I played the first two weeks and was in, you know, not a considerable amount of pain but certainly painful two weeks and actually played pretty well at the Sony despite my injury, and then I just felt like with two weeks off, I'd be ready to play again. And I tried to go out in Phoenix and kind of reinjured the rib, and at that point I said, you know, I just need to take as much time off as I can until it heals. So I took -- basically took four weeks off after that and then started back in Florida and just -- I was probably 95 percent healthy, but, you know, certainly no pain in the rib. It -- just my game was very rusty and, you know, missed three cuts in a row, and here I am this week. I feel like I'm just now getting comfortable with my golf swing, my golf game. Normally if you have some type of injury, you can kind of do something, chip and putt, but the injury was in a spot where it was actually painful bending over in a putting stands. So there's really nothing I did for four weeks. The clubs just collected a lot of dust. You know, I feel good now. The doctor I went to see in Houston is David Brawnrider. I don't know if I'm spelling that right. He works some with the Dynamos and some with the Houston Texans. He just gave me some good advice on what to do with my time off. He wanted me to continue to be in the gym and do some weights and certain exercise to keep the ribcage muscles, you know, kind of strong. And so I did that for four weeks. Certainly that helped, and I feel really healthy now. No pain in the rib, whatsoever. Q. So you could do weights, but you couldn't putt. JEFF MAGGERT: It was a strange injury. Certain exercises that I do with weights that normally, you know, you get your arm in a certain position and it's like you've got an ice pick in your side and someone is just twisting it. And, you know, I could lift 200 pounds off the floor, but if I tried to put 5 pounds up above my head, you know, there was that sharp pain and that was -- Obviously when you're swinging a golf club, your arms are moving up and you're using a lot of these ribcage muscles and you're putting a lot of stress on the fracture in certain positions, and, you know, without the bone healing, it's just going to delay the healing process. Q. Where did you feel like your game was when the week started? Is this sort of -- JEFF MAGGERT: Ball striking has been pretty well. You know, I just -- you know, the Tour is so competitive now, if you're off your game just a little bit, it's hard -- you're going to miss a few cuts. And what I needed was three weeks in Florida, playing four days, you know, making the cut, not necessarily having a chance to win the tournament but just getting four rounds of competitive golf in. You know, get your chipping touch back and putting touch and your mental, you know, course management skills and all that, kind of gets you back into the routine. I feel like I'm two months behind everyone else. I'm fortunate that we don't have, you know, short season, our season goes to the end of October. So certainly I've got the rest of the year to play well. And, you know, I've been lucky. I've never been injured in my whole life of playing golf. Since I was a kid, I've never had an injury that's kept me out of playing. So I'm fortunate in that regard, and, you know, also fortunate that it's not, you know, a permanent injury like a torn shoulder or a knee or something that needs to be repaired and rebuilt. It was basically just the bone breaking and having a chance to heal. Q. Jeff, because of the time you missed, will you add any tournaments to your schedule? JEFF MAGGERT: Probably not. I would normally play probably 26 or -7 tournaments and probably be in the low 20s this year. Tournament-wise I probably didn't miss that many. I normally would have played about five tournaments on the West Coast. I wound up playing two and really played my normal schedule in Florida. I really only missed about three tournaments. It was just the fact that other than my attempted start in Phoenix, I went, you know, basically six, seven weeks, really, without really playing golf at all. My golf game got behind a little bit. Q. You aren't where you normally would be this time of year as far as finishes and that kind of stuff? JEFF MAGGERT: It's nice to get off to a good start. I won last, year which gave me a two-year exemption. So certainly the pressure of trying to get out here, you know, and make sure I'm playing well and, you know, the money list and all that. So, that's definitely a bonus in the fact that I don't have to worry about that this year. I'm just going to play hard and give myself some opportunities to, you know, be near the lead and win some tournaments. Q. You probably be leading by four, five shots if you weren't so rusty, maybe six or seven? JEFF MAGGERT: Sometimes when your expectations are low is when you play better. If you're playing really well and you get to a tournament or course that you like, you're like "Oh, yeah, this is going to be great; I'm hitting the ball well, coming off a good stretch of tournaments; this is going to be a great week," and all of a sudden, you know, you tank it. But sometimes when you start at the bottom and your expectations maybe aren't that good, you just kind of, you know, your game plan is a little more conservative and play steady and take what your get. Q. Your expectations weren't very high at the start? JEFF MAGGERT: I wouldn't say that. After missing three cuts in a row, making the cut would have been progress. Q. You succeeded? JEFF MAGGERT: Yesterday was a good round. You've got to have rounds like that kind to kind of get your confidence back. Certainly, yesterday's round and being able to fight a difficult day, windy conditions, definitely helps my confidence. Q. Given this difficulty at the start of year has been for you, you come out today, you hit it stiff three holes in a row, get nothing out of it, how much of a battle was it not to be kind of negative at that point and not let that turn into -- JEFF MAGGERT: I would say that's probably one of my downfalls, anyway, being a little too hard on myself. You know, the fact that, you know, I started the week trying to be a little more patient with my game, and -- you know, I would say, you know, mentally it was -- it bothered me for a few holes, but you got to put that behind you and keep going. After the nice birdie put on 17, I was, you know, thinking about trying to get a few birdies and pull away a little bit. Q. Are you now exempt from having to run errands or go to any stores or anything? JEFF MAGGERT: It's been busy, you know, and the commute adds another 45 minutes there and 45 minutes home. That eats away another hour and a half of my day. I've had, you know -- I wouldn't trade my career for anything. I probably would have won a few more times here and there, but I've got five kids at home and four of my own and one stepson, and it's busy. I got three teenagers and my twins are two and a half. You put the twins to bed at night and they go to sleep, and you wonder if your teenagers are ever going to come home. I got no complaints. I'm just having fun with what I'm doing. I'm 43 years old this year, and hopefully I can play another ten years the way I'm playing and just keep having fun. Q. Is that kind of the parental yipps when you've got your little ones in bed? JEFF MAGGERT: Golfers blame a lot of bad holes and shots on different things. So I'm running out of excuses because I've been doing this for 20 years. Q. You've got twin bogies? JEFF MAGGERT: Yes. Q. What was your encounter like with Mr. Bush? JEFF MAGGERT: I've played some golf with President Bush before, and he's just an amazing person the first time that I went to go down and play with him in town at Houston Country Club. He's the kind of guy when you spend a few hours with him, it's like you've known him your whole life. I was very impressed. I was obviously nervous, you know, playing with an ex-president, and he just made me feel so welcome and called me on several other occasions just out of the blue, sitting at my home. You pick up your phone and someone says "There's a call from President Bush on the line. Will you accept?" You kind of go "I think I have to take this call." Q. Does he call you collect? JEFF MAGGERT: Calls out of blue, "Come out and play golf." It's like "Sure." Q. How many times do you think you've played with him? JEFF MAGGERT: Two, three times, and just it's been a blast every time. Q. So when the you come in, look at the caller I.D., what does it say? You don't think it's one of your buddies putting you on. How long does take it to play a round? JEFF MAGGERT: I love to play fast. Playing on Tour drives me nuts because it's five hours every time. Three hours if you're playing just the two of you, and, you know, he hits and goes. It's fun. That's the way I like to play. It's funny. The weather doesn't bother him, either. Couple times he called me over the winter, and literally it was probably 35 degrees and a little misty rain and "Would you like to come play golf with the President today?" I look outside. Normally I wouldn't, but if it's the president, I'll make room. But no, it's been fun. He's obviously -- you know, everything that's going on with his life and his family, I'm sure just for him to take the time to come up and shake my hand, makes me feel good. Q. That must be kind of a cool feeling, you're in front of all these people, and there's the president kind of, "Yeah, I know that guy." JEFF MAGGERT: Like I said, once you're around him, he's just one of your friends and he really is a great human being. Q. Did you know he was going to be here today? JEFF MAGGERT: I didn't really think about it, and then I actually was pulling in the parking lot and saw a couple limos and someone said something about President Bush. And I first thought of the current president, no, I don't think there would be two limos if he was here. I knew he was on-site, but I didn't really expect him to be out on the course, though. Q. 16 is where you saw him? JEFF MAGGERT: Yeah. Q. How does he play? JEFF MAGGERT: He actually played pretty well the day I played with him. He's pretty hard on himself, too. At the time, he was probably, you know, probably just breaking 100, maybe, kind of bogey golf. Pretty steady kind of down the middle most of the time and, you know, probably his age and length is probably his biggest handicap but just a steady golfer. Q. Did you take any money from him? JEFF MAGGERT: No, no betting. Although probably would have. Probably would have won, too. DOUG MILNE: Okay. Jeff, thanks very much. Good luck on the weekend. End of FastScripts |
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