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MASTERS TOURNAMENTApril 6, 2007Brett WetterichAUGUSTA, GEORGIA ROB JOHNSTON: Well, it's my pleasure to thank Mr. Brett Wetterich for being with us. As you know, Brett had a sensational year last year high, on the Money List, Ryder Cup performance, and this is his first Masters that he has acquitted himself extremely well shooting a dandy 69 yesterday at 3-under as co-leader, and had a very, very solid 73 today with a 36-hole total of 2-under. It is a great honor to have you. Great playing. BRETT WETTERICH: Thank you. ROB JOHNSTON: Great to see your name up there. BRETT WETTERICH: It's nice to see it up there. Q. What can you tell us about Wallace State and the road to get from there to here? BRETT WETTERICH: That's been a long road. They were the only school that offered me a scholarship coming out of high school. I went to Alabama for a year, played golf there for a year, and I wasn't a big fan of school, so I kind of stopped that after one year. And I moved down to Florida, started playing mini-tours. Took me a while to progress and every year I kind of got a little better and better. Just here I am now. Q. Was that the only school that offered you a scholarship? BRETT WETTERICH: Better not go there. (Laughter) Maybe I wasn't good enough, I don't know. Q. What was your strategy, what were you thinking on the first tee that you wanted to accomplish? BRETT WETTERICH: I wanted to make a lot of pars. You always hear the great players say that pars are great in majors. I was just going out there to try make as many as I could and I did pretty good for 14 holes, and then had a few hiccups, but kind of gathered myself and had a good 17 and 18th hole. Q. People expect, just given how fairly anonymous you are, people expect you to fold under the pressure of this kind of environment, but when you talk about sort of -- contrast that to your struggles getting to this point and the lean years where you were trying to make it. BRETT WETTERICH: It's a lot different, you know, now. I feel pretty comfortable now and I don't feel like I'm -- I don't feel like I shouldn't be out here playing and I don't feel like I shouldn't be at the top of the leaderboard because I'm playing well. I don't know the answer to the other part, the first part. Q. I heard you say outside that your neighbor called you at 1:30 last night. Can you elaborate on that? BRETT WETTERICH: (Laughing) I'm the type of person that gets phone calls like that every now and then. My buddies forget that I'm playing at the Masters and I have to get up at 5:30. Q. Was it a congratulatory call? BRETT WETTERICH: No. (Chuckling). Q. It's been a pretty amazing year for you, and this year you've won the final tournament that Byron Nelson hosted, you made the Ryder Cup Team, you're leading at the Masters; is there a way to equate those events and did you ever ask Mr. Nelson about his play at the Masters? BRETT WETTERICH: No, I didn't get to ask Mr. Nelson. I didn't get to talk to him that much. I wish I had more time to ask him, you know, and pick his brain and talk to him a little bit. You know, unfortunately I wasn't able to do that. And I can't tell you, you know, what the difference is between, you know, playing six months ago to a year ago. It's just everything just kind of came together for me. Q. I'd just be curious, your play on 13, what did you have in and was that any kind of a go shot? BRETT WETTERICH: No, it was -- I was too far back. I never even thought about going for it. I just wanted to lay up down that left side and have a decent sand wedge shot at it. That's the way it happened. Q. And 15, where did your tee shot go? BRETT WETTERICH: In the trees. It wasn't that bad, but I had to punch it out. I couldn't have gone for the green. Q. As you look back on the day, how big is your putt on 17? BRETT WETTERICH: Very big. That kind of stopped my bleeding for, in my mind, having three 3-putts in a row, that's not a good thing. And to make that 8-footer or whatever it was, confidence-wise, it helped me out a lot. I made a few of those today. You know, that helps me out mentally a lot when I'm making 8-footers for par instead of missing them. Q. When you look at that leaderboard as it's configured now, there's not a lot of Masters experience on that leaderboard. Is there anything about the way the course is playing now that sort of negates that local knowledge advantage that has typically been true here? BRETT WETTERICH: Gosh, I don't think so. I think we're just -- the guys that are up there just, you know, for two days have played well and I'm sure there's going to be some past champions that are sneaking up there in the next couple of days. Q. It seems like you're playing a little bit differently this week, taking a little more time, not being as aggressive; can you talk about that and how you've done on the par 5s so far? BRETT WETTERICH: I definitely am playing a little less aggressive than I normally play for sure. Like I said just a little bit ago, I'm trying to make as many pars as I can. That's usually not my style of the game. I'm pretty much firing at pins and hitting that at greens. I'd have went for it on 13 if I was probably anywhere else today. And what was the other part? Q. If somebody told you that you would be 2-over on the par 5s, and where you're at, would you be pretty surprised? BRETT WETTERICH: Yeah. You know, usually -- this year I haven't played the par 5s that well, but normally that's a strong suit to my game and it just hasn't gone that way for me. I've been in bad spots on the par 5s these last few days so I need to try to improve that. Q. I know you have your brother's name and initials on your hat and bag, but a day like today, accomplishing what you have the last two days, how much do you think about him? BRETT WETTERICH: Just, you know, just depends. I try not to sit there and solely think about it. But there's going to be times when I look at my bag and see his initials, and you know, for a few seconds or so, just kind of think about him. But I try not to -- I try not to bring that into my mind so much as I'm out here playing, but I'm glad it's there. Q. You've touched on this already. We know you as a big hitter who is a birdie machine. Do you find it challenging that you have to grind out pars? BRETT WETTERICH: No, I'm used to grinding for pars, the way I play. It's just different. Just because I'm shooting away from a lot of pins where normally on different courses, you're firing at those. That's the only difference really. Q. How much does this place wear on you mentally more than any other place, and does that have any other bearing on the bogeys on the back side? BRETT WETTERICH: I think it wears on you because every shot, it could cost you double-bogey. You've really got to pay attention and think about what you're doing. Other places, the penalties are not going to be as severe as out here. You can chip them off the greens, and there's not too many courses that I can think of that we play like that. Q. Are the conditions similar to what they were yesterday in terms of the way the golf course is playing? BRETT WETTERICH: I think it played a lot different for me. You know, it wasn't playing as firm this morning as it was yesterday afternoon. The greens definitely were not as hard this morning. They were holding. The greens started to firm up on the last four or five holes, but I think it played, up to that point, played a lot different. Q. How much are you keeping your driver in your bag, and secondly, like does it kind of make you nervous not playing your usual style? BRETT WETTERICH: I don't know how many times I've hit it out there. I'm definitely hitting on three out of the four par 5s and maybe a couple of the par 4. I don't think it hurts me not to hit it. I don't think it's changing, you know, how I'm playing. I mean, my 3-wood still goes an awfully long way. Q. You look at the board and I know things could change, but there's four rookies from the Ryder Cup Team that got a lot of attention in September. Can you see any correlation between that experience and playing in this moment? BRETT WETTERICH: The four that are up there -- all four of us, it's nice to see because I know we caught -- or at least I caught -- some of the guys played pretty well. J.J. and Zach both played pretty good golf over there, and so did Vaughn. You've just got to forget about it to me, and whatever happened over there, they can say whatever they want to say -- Q. I meant more just having gone through such a big stage, a lot of people, a lot of pressure, a lot of attention, that kind of thing. BRETT WETTERICH: It's different. There's definitely a lot more people at the Ryder Cup. You had 50,000 or 40,000 people on four holes. I think it's a different kind of pressure as opposed to a major tournament. You know, I haven't played in that many majors and I've only played in that, but to me they are a little different in that aspect. Q. At the Nelson you said after you won that you had seen some signs that week, bagpipes or whatever, that sort of gave you a feeling that something special might happen. Have you had any of those types of things happen? BRETT WETTERICH: I haven't seen anything like that this week. Q. Also, before 2006, going into that season, did you do anything technically or swing-wise? BRETT WETTERICH: Nothing different. I've been the same for the last seven years. I haven't done anything different except for change the clubs, that's it. Q. Would it be safe to say they watered the greens? BRETT WETTERICH: I don't know. I don't know if they did or not. It just might be from being cold this morning and overnight some dew or something maybe on them. But I didn't sneak out here last night to see what they were doing. (Laughter). Q. Were the tees moved up on any holes? BRETT WETTERICH: You know, I wasn't that -- I wouldn't have noticed something like that unless it was real severe. Q. Could you go over what happened on 15 and 16, and is it hard to just keep making pars; does it begin to wear on you? BRETT WETTERICH: It didn't begin to wear on me. I was pretty happy making par after par and sneak in a birdie there. It was just two bad 3-putts. 15 was a bad 3-putt. That's all you can say. I hit a decent shot into there and just hit two bad putts, so that was that. On 16, to me, that's one of the hardest putts that we'll have on the golf course. You've got to come up and you've got to make sure it stays up on top, or it's rolling back down. Or you risk what I did and putting over the green. Still had a decent look at it even though it wasn't the best putt in the world. Q. How does the cold weather affect you, and does it make the course even harder? BRETT WETTERICH: It's harder, just, you know, the cold air. Obviously no one wants to play in 50 degrees out here, playing golf in 50 degree weather. You've just got to take a little more club on holes, I grew up in it, so I'm kind of used to the cold weather. I don't think it affected me that much. Q. How fresh did you feel this morning and how much sleep did you get last night eventually? BRETT WETTERICH: I don't get much sleep as it is, even if I do sleep good. I probably had three hours of sleep I guess. I was asleep until 1:30, and then took a while to get back to sleep and before I knew it the alarm was going off. Q. How long did you stay on the phone? BRETT WETTERICH: I probably should have -- he'll be getting a call today. (Laughter) Q. To go along with the par, par, par run that you made early in the round, how early was the par at 7; what happened on the tee shot? BRETT WETTERICH: I hit 3-wood off of there into the trees and had to pitch it out and kind of take your medicine and make sure the third shot gets on the green to give yourself a chance. I think it barely cleared the bunker and got on the green and I struck a pretty good putt there. I mean, that was a huge kind of turnaround for me. Q. Was that as important a play as you had in the round? BRETT WETTERICH: For sure. I made a couple good pars before that, too, but that was a very nice par save for me going into the next hole, being a par 5, thinking, you know, I've got a good chance of making birdie here. So it was big. Q. There's a lot of Wallace States, which one did you go to? BRETT WETTERICH: Hanceville. Q. Was your brother an avid golfer and what are your best memories of playing golf with him? BRETT WETTERICH: Yeah, he loved to golf. And I remember he hit me one time in the stomach. I remember that. Growing up we all went down as a family and played, so it was -- that was probably the most times that I got to play with him. He was a little older than I was, so he was kind of off doing his thing when I was still a little kid. So when we went down there as a family and we all played, it was a pretty good time. Q. What were the circumstances of being hit in the stomach? BRETT WETTERICH: Oh, I was standing in front of him like 40 yards I think and he dribbled one up there. (Laughter). ROB JOHNSTON: Brett, thank you for being with us. Congratulations on your wonderful play the first two rounds and we wish you the very best the last two days at Augusta. Congratulations. End of FastScripts |
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