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MASTERS TOURNAMENTApril 7, 2007Stuart ApplebyAUGUSTA, GEORGIA RONALD TOWNSEND: Good afternoon, or maybe I should say, good evening. We'd like to welcome and thank Stuart Appleby for stopping by, and we will take your questions. Q. You're either going to have the lead or be pretty close to it, but you probably would have been happier to have a couple more shots. Take us through the only blimp in the day, 17? STUART APPLEBY: Overall it was very comfortable out there considering conditions were an extreme opponent. Really played decent all day. You know, played smart, did the right things at the right time. 17, I hit a bad tee shot and really was trying to -- from where I saw my lie, I thought, well, if I make a 5, that will be pretty good. And really, the whole day was a bit like that, you know, extracted par sometimes, in really difficult situations where I thought maybe I need to realistically think about a bogey. Yeah, would loved to have had that sandshot again and not was trying to be greedy but just, you know, look, should have been in the middle of the fairway, no two ways about it, or somewhere a bit more respectable. Yeah, that was the hole that I let a couple of shots slip or sure. Overall I felt like there was plenty of holes where I could have let more slip throughout the day. I just happened to bunch one hole up and have a triple. Q. Can you just put into context the temperature played today? You've played winter golf in Australia in your youth, but how cold was it out there? STUART APPLEBY: Me, I didn't really feel cold until about 15, 16. It was really shady down there in the corner and that was cold. I don't know how the people in the stands -- well, seats, just sitting there, the members, were just -- man, it was very frigid. I noticed that when I had -- when I hit my bunker shot on 17. I hit it thin and that cold, rattly feeling you get in your fingers and hurt for that one reason, fingers were just very cold. I've played in colder conditions, but with the dryness of the golf course and that, too, normally this team tour is associated with rain or something you would see at St. Andrews. Tough day, I don't think we've seen scores anything like this at Augusta for a long time. Q. You have not contended in a lot of majors so far, but wondering going back to Muirfield what you took out of there and anything you can bring to the table tomorrow? STUART APPLEBY: Muirfield, very, very different. I was playing well all week, putting decent but just burning the hole. I just remember thinking, come Sunday -- kind of going back to, I had a great draw on Saturday. I got in before the storm did and made a real run up the leader board there and come Sunday, the putts dropped. Got into a skew of broken-up, four-way playoff which was very weird in itself. Looking back, I was very pleased, but looking back, you just don't get a lot of opportunities like that to get into contention all the time. Certainly my past has never been flooded with appearances with someone like Tiger and many other major players. But overall, I was happy, but looking back, you know, like I say, you just don't see that all the time. So being that tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day for everybody, you know, we all want to milk the most out of our successful day. Q. What did you hit into No. 4 and just how good of a birdie was that? STUART APPLEBY: 4, watched the guys before that play the hole, Geoff Ogilvy and Jim Furyk. Geoff hit a shot that looks like someone, you know, skeet-shot at it and just fell out of the sky. That's just a nightmare hole and I went in there and sort of partially had to guess what club to hit. I didn't think I hit such a great shot in the air and then just looked, you know, looked great and nearly flew it in the hole and missed by about three inches and I made a great putt down there. That hole, you could make 5 there and, you know, by getting it at the right time and hitting that 4-iron into the bush behind or in the trap. So just, there was a lot of just luck. I don't know if that's always a score-related thing because today, there's an element of guessing going on. Q. So what club did you end up using? STUART APPLEBY: 4. Q. You said on Thursday night, you weren't playing well enough to win; how do you feel about your game now? STUART APPLEBY: My game probably feels about the same. You know, hitting some proper shots. I played the back nine pretty well which is something I've never really done well. I haven't gone for any of the par 5s in two. That seems to work; I'm making birdies doing it the old-fashioned three-shot way. My putting has improved. A bit more comfortable on the greens. I wasn't comfortable -- really was too nervous the first few days, and tried to get myself more relaxed. That's the biggest battle at the moment. I said to you last week in Houston, I was never really comfortable the way I was putting, and you know, technique, my actual technique was not right and I cleared that up a lot more. And just getting comfortable out here is so difficult to do. Q. You just answered my question with what you just said -- STUART APPLEBY: Okay, next question. (Laughter). Q. Talking about the Houston Open, what experiences or lessons can you glean from last week to take into tomorrow? STUART APPLEBY: That I didn't putt well that week. I just didn't putt well enough at all, and gave Scotty too many chances and he played great on Sunday and really didn't miss anything. You know, it's frustrating because I spend so much time working on my game, you don't want little issues to pop up. You're really trying to maintain that. What would I want to take out of that? I don't want to play like that again. I don't want to putt like that again. That's the biggest battle. It's a real mind game out here. I just told myself to relax and imagine you're just playing golf, it doesn't matter what stage you're on. Q. Does the weather and the fact that you're talking about hitting a shot and feeling the tingles in your hands -- what do you have to do to get ready for tomorrow knowing it's going to be similar conditions, the final round of a major? STUART APPLEBY: I don't know, I haven't got much experience to really say, oh, well, I'll do this, I'll do that, based on that. I will just plod along, do what I have been doing the last few days. Yeah, I'm just not going to be getting too wrapped up in it. There's a lot, a lot of work left. There's 18 holes, but to be honest, it's way more than that. Q. You so often hear it can be an advantage to play in the morning group when it's quiet and the course has not dried out as much, but today it seemed like it was miserable for everybody no matter what you played? STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, Retief shot a fantastic score and probably played in colder conditions, and I'm sure his round would have been littered with some par saves, near misses. And that's really a guy that just he skipped -- and it was escaping, it was dodging bullets constantly. And today there was a day where there was not any advantage anywhere. Q. If that holds up and if you are paired with Woods, can you talk about playing with him the final day? STUART APPLEBY: Well, he won't even know I'm there. (Laughter) I'm sure I'll know he's there. (Laughter) He'll be the other guy. Q. What were a couple of your best par saves? STUART APPLEBY: Oh, where do you want to start. Well, every hole. Every hole. I mean, you walk off with a par, you're just happy to get your score card. You know, probably one of the best was on 8. I hit a pull-hook left of the trees, chipped it out and had a 2-iron in from about 215 yards on a straight uphill lie, straight into a hurricane and knocked it on -- not on but close to the pin and hit a great chip and made a par. That's one you could easily have made something worse. But I don't think you want to hear about that. (Laughter). Q. You look at the board, we would say Tiger has an advantage because of his major championships. Does the weather -- could that be an equalizer? STUART APPLEBY: Look, Tiger has always got an advantage. It's obscene that he has an advantage. It's quite obvious. You don't have to say, wow, look and see that writer; look, he stepped out on a limb and said Tiger has an advantage. (Laughter). Yeah, he has more experience than what's left of this field put together. So the weather, does it equalize it? Yeah, sometimes. Shot supremacy is certainly there. Emotionally, mentally, he's a tough competitor, but he knows he beat the golf course and he always has. Whenever he's been in the lead and he's nearly always won. He's known how to tackle the golf course. He's not worried about what everybody else is doing. In a way that should be obvious to us that that's what we have to do good. Q. Despite what happened on 17, you came back on 18 and hit a good tee shot, almost birdied the hole with a good tee shot; can you talk about your mind-set from 17th green to 18 tee. STUART APPLEBY: Well, I was very disappointed that I dropped so many shots on that one hole. I guess you can't go back -- I got over it, spilled milk, move on. Boy, you'd better move on, because you're about to try and hit a very difficult fairway and obviously a par is a huge bonus and I hit two great shots. Really was confident I could make that putt on the last. I knew I was never going to run it by much, but I thought really was really going to lag it in and was confident. I'm disappointed I didn't make it because I felt like that would have been some redemption after 17. Q. How long was the putt? STUART APPLEBY: Probably about ten feet. Q. We had gasps in this room today as we were watching what this course is doing; how would you characterize what the course is doing to the best golfers in the world? STUART APPLEBY: Well, it's set up right on the safe limit of tournament play. The officials here really know where the pins need to be, they know what the winds are; they are not doing anything silly. The only really difficult hole from a sense of being too difficult was 14 yesterday, was just impossible to find a shot in your bag. But today, you knew where the danger was, you knew where you needed to play. The greens were consistent. That's what is so good about this place, it just -- it's not funky by any means. It's just a real, real test. It's a joy to play, finally, I know what I'm doing here, but the whole factor is actually doing it is another game again? Q. I'm just wondering in your non-tournament rounds where you've maybe hacked around with Tiger for some fun over little Nassau or something, how you've done? STUART APPLEBY: Well, I think you just may as well, look at the Tour record, that will get you enough stats there, won't it? What would you like me to say, that I cleaned him up all the time, I'm great on the practice range? I can beat him; I can hit it past him? No, no, and no. Q. So you've never had your way with him at all? STUART APPLEBY: No, I've never had my way with him. (Laughter). Q. How many times have you played tomorrow's round when you're a kid, last round at Augusta, final group with the best player in the world? STUART APPLEBY: Wow, I don't think I ever have. I remember watching that and seeing a million highlight reels. It's going to be a very interesting day for me. It will be a real fight, really, really tough for me. It will be tough for everybody. You know what I'm going to really focus on is enjoying tomorrow. Because if Tiger wins, or when he wins tournament, he's not so wound up and tight and sense that he is not enjoying it. I've found that the best play comes from really just relaxing and enjoying it and just taking what comes, because if you try and save what's not already made, which is trying to find a par when, you know, you can't control the outcome, you tend to make worse. Tomorrow I'll just go out and really try and enjoy myself and understand that it's a very different scenario tomorrow from what the other days have been, certainly from a crowd point of view and where all of the fan base will be towards Tiger. I understand how that works, but yeah, I look forward to it. I've just got to relax and enjoy it. That's how all my best play comes. End of FastScripts |
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