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AT&T NATIONALJuly 5, 2007Stuart ApplebyBETHESDA, MARYLAND NELSON SILVERIO: Stuart, appreciate you making the trek up here to talk with us. 4-under par, currently tied for the lead I believe. Just general thoughts on your round. STUART APPLEBY: I guess I thought we might have some worse weather today with the potential chance of storm that was coming in. We got a rain shower which we had a delay which was nice. I think if we had to play through that, it would have been pretty difficult for maybe two holes. No, I played decent today. I think my swing feels a lot more comfortable. I've got a good couple of things going on with it that are working. The greens weren't maybe as smooth as we all would have liked so making putts was difficult, and finished with three birdies, so that obviously picked my round up and finished it. So, happy, I would like to shoot those sort of rounds more often. And certainly this week, 3-under par, 4-under par is a decent score per day. Q. Can you talk about the finish the last three holes there? STUART APPLEBY: 7, a good par 3 today, the pin just tucked on the top tier and I hit it to about four feet. Q. What did you hit? STUART APPLEBY: 6-iron. I hit a decent drive, ended up actually in the left rough and hit a decent sand wedge out and probably holed maybe a 30-footer. Then on the last, I hit a drive right, didn't hit a very good drive, one of my poorer drives for the day and laid up and hit a 7-iron from about 170 yards to about, I don't know, two feet, 2 1/2 feet for three in a row. So I was 1-under coming into the last three. So that went from a good day to a much better day. So it's the first round and a lot of settling down has been done today with everyone getting a feel for the golf course. It's a good quality golf course, not quite as demanding in the greens aspect in speed and firmness as we might have had here in '97. But certainly the rough is very thick. It's not more than a couple of days extra growth from being U.S. Open length. It's very severe. But just getting comfortable on the greens would be the thing. They are not that quick and they are extremely soft. Hopefully we'll get them drying out a little bit, but poa annua is typical grass, doesn't like the heat much and gets very temperamental. Q. Is that the issue, just can't do much with the greens, given the poa? STUART APPLEBY: Well, we had poa at the Open this year but they were very, very quick. But you have to spend thousands of man hours on them. Q. Rolling them? STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, cutting them, rolling them, cutting them, just keeping them down. But obviously in a tournament like this, you're not going to do this sort of stuff. If you could, I reckon even even par would be a good score today if you got the greens a little bit more aggressive in their speed and certainly their firmness. They are just very forgiving right now. You can land the ball beyond the hole and draw it back or you can hit a shot out of the rough and it will still stop. That's the thing that's probably the easiest part on the golf course is actually stopping the ball on the greens. Otherwise the tee shots are pretty demanding and your placement is demanding but you can get away with a little bit more on the greens. Q. Growing up in Australia, which of the four majors was in your consciousness first? I would assume the Open Championship. STUART APPLEBY: The British Open, I just remember getting up the earliest to watch the British Open. We had to get up from midnight, two in the morning, and that was certainly the longest coverage, certainly the most boring coverage to watch. Just watching a seagull stand by a bunker or something like that for 30 or 40 seconds puts you back to bed at three in the morning. (Laughter). I think the one I always wondered about the most, Augusta was later in the morning, so you get up maybe six in the morning there it was, what was the weather like. Because Augusta was always -- you could have the most spectacular days or you could have the rainy days. With Augusta, it was like, what's that first shot going to be and how is the weather. Probably the British Open has the most record on paper for Australians, certainly the Masters the least amount. They were the two definitely by far. The U.S. Open and the PGA always felt like the same golf tournaments to me. They all looked the same. Q. Do you feel like the British Open is maybe the one that best fits your game? STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, I mean, maybe windy conditions, yeah -- Q. You've been in a playoff before? STUART APPLEBY: Potentially. I've always got a good feeling about the British Opens. I've played quite a few and I really have not played well in a lot of them. But it's the one I always sort of had a feel for as a kid, and I'd like to turn that feeling into something that's reality. Q. On that same theme a little bit, what are your recollections of Carnoustie, and what are your anticipations in a couple of weeks? STUART APPLEBY: Pretty sure I didn't make the cut. I'm pretty sure I didn't make the cut. I've heard it's in great shape. I've heard it's nothing like what it was. That's pretty obvious. That was a big faux paux there. They made a hell of a mistake. I think we'll have a great championship golf course. I have no doubts about that. I just hope it's nice and dry and firm. I hope we don't get too much brain. I've seen the Wimbledon is pretty wet. I don't know if it's extending north the rain. I would like to get it nice and firm and fast. That's the way they all should be. Q. You had a really strong finish today, but if you had to look at your entire round what part of your game would you like to remain consistent on or improve upon if you're going to win the tournament? STUART APPLEBY: If you ask a pro what he can do better, you'll get a ten-minute conversation. I'd like to hit it better -- I like the way I'm hitting it, if you were to pick all parts of my game, and I like the way I putted today. The greens, they weren't as true as you would hope them to be late in the day. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing today. I've progressed -- my game feels like it's progressing and I'm learning a few good things. It's the first round, and I'll just keep working on those things. There's nothing drastic I have to do. You're always chasing your tail in this game, anyways. Q. With regard to this event here, can you see this as becoming a fixture like the Memorial has and Colonial? STUART APPLEBY: Well, I asked Tiger that this morning, not so much the direct question; are we going to be here more often. But he didn't know. I think we're going to be here next year but he didn't know after that. I hope we are because obviously it's a good golf course. As a player, we're always looking at what date or what part of the schedule does it fit in for us, and if it does sort of fit, well, what's the golf course like. That's pretty much ticked the box for every player because it's a quality golf course. I'm pretty sure it will be a tournament -- I'm not sure of Tiger's input directly into things more than just managerial stuff and so on, whether he's saying, hey, we want this or I need more of this or less of this. But I think it will mature as a tournament. I would like to think we could have this golf course a lot more often. But there are thousands of members here that may disagree with what I think. Q. Just as a follow, some guys on TOUR have been vocal about the shorter field here, that perhaps being unfair. Where do you stand on that? STUART APPLEBY: Where do I stand? I can understand what they say. I do understand that. I guess some -- I don't know. I think sometimes it depends on where the complaint is coming from. Is it coming from a player who has been floating around missing in that -- missing that event for a number of years, or is it coming from younger players on the move or younger players coming, starting out. I certainly remember, I didn't care what the rules were. The rules were the rules and that's what I had to play by. You come out, you play, you do your best. Everyone is playing by the rules. Everyone has to start somewhere and everyone is going to finish somewhere. I can understand their point. But, you know, should we have jam every long day of the year, should we jam from daylight to morning teeing off to darkness? No, not with this country. With the weather being so dynamic all the time and getting rain delays every other week, you just can't afford to do that. With the benefit of time, I just don't think it works, the rounds get very, very long. A lot of the talk about slow play comes with bigger fields, not just slower golf. So I would have to say that we have to monitor how many limited-field events we have. But we also have to ask, are the sponsors happy; do the sponsors walk away happy with 120, or are they happy with 156. Q. Aside from the fact that you have kicked everyone around at Mercedes for a long time, you seem to play well; whether it's this week or this area, you play really well here. STUART APPLEBY: Avenal '98 was great, I was playing fantastic that week. Yeah, I don't know, I like this area. People ask me, you talk about Kapalua. Kapalua, why; I don't know. I've always said to myself, "Why don't I just play like I do at Kapalua all the time?" There's very few things about Kapalua that are similar to any other tournament we play, so you can't replicate great play just like that. There are a couple of things that we do at Kapalua that we do every week, like walking down the fairways and marking the ball and you have to use little triggers like that. I don't know fits a time of year thing. I think Kapalua for me was definitely -- I knew I had played well and I just knew what was going on at that golf course. I just seemed to pick the right club quite often. So I had that in the back of my mind. I know I do well here, so I'll trust it; I'll hit a 7-iron not a six. Here, I don't know, my record isn't anything like Kapalua here. But if I win this week, you have to say, a couple of wins in the D.C. area, a happy place. Q. I think you have eight Top-10s locally. STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, I might have had a Top-10 one year. Trying to remember if it was the Open -- Q. Most have been at Avenal, but you seem to play well in this city. STUART APPLEBY: Write whatever you like. (Laughter). Q. I know you can talked about Carnoustie, but the first two majors were won at 5-over each. Is this where we're going in majors, and is this a trend that you see continuing and what's your take on it? STUART APPLEBY: The weather is the most conducive thing that will decide a score. That's it. There's no one else that has a real say in it, unless Mother Nature does. Obviously Augusta, we had freaky cold weather; we had freaky dry weather; we had windy weather, very weird combination. I can see that maybe once every ten or 15 years. The Open, well, yes, you could see that we had a demanding golf course and we had super-slick greens facing away from you; unique. Carnoustie, I don't see that unless we have -- well, if we have potentially really gusty winds, but the greens are always pretty general and putts can be made there. You hit it to 20 feet at the U.S. Open, and you're thinking, all right, 2-putting is really my main goal here. Whereas 20 feet at the British Open, you're thinking, well, I've got a chance, I've got a real chance, not likely you're going to knock it 12 feet by. Is it where it's going? No. As long as it's fair, as long as you're not trying to hit a driver down a 15-yard fairway over and over and over on a 500-yard par 4, then I think it's very fair. I don't mind Mother Nature slapping us around as long as they understand skill is the thing that wins tournaments, not luck. Q. Do you remember on 18 at Avenal the year you won, you got 2-iron, one of the best shots here -- STUART APPLEBY: I was playing with Fred, because Fred is obviously a bit of a legend around here. I remember I hit a great shot into 7. The wind was really howling. It just was starting to rain, I had just missed a good birdie chance on 17 and came to 18 and didn't quite know where I was in the tournament. But I knew I was on the serious end -- I knew pretty much what I had to do which was make par on the last. Think of how short we used to hit back then. I hit a pretty good drive into the rain and into a fairly strong wind and hit 3-iron that hole. So that back pin was really rare. I remember taking the club back near the top of my swing, had a bit of a hanging lie, I wasn't totally happy with where I thought the club was at the top of my swing and I hit it and nailed it perfect and hit it to 15, 20 feet. I said to my caddie, Joe, something along the lines, "Is that where you want it" or something like that. And he said, "Yeah, that's good, just knock it up, 2-putt and you'll be happy." That was probably one of best shots I hit with the trying conditions that we had. That was pretty cool. Q. I just wonder on the leaderboard, you have several guys that are not generally long hitters like Fred Funk, Corey Pavin; does that say about the course? STUART APPLEBY: The course is firming up. Last week was a good example of when the condition get firm, some of the shorter hitters can come up. But you did expect that when you have a good quality setup. The shorter hitters can make their way around the golf course, an older-style golf course with a bit of run and they obviously have fantastic short games and putting games. So there's absolutely no reason why they can't and they are both very, very good competitors. Forget just playing, but they know how to think and compete and get over a bad shot more than anyone. So I'm not surprised at all. If it gets really soft, then it becomes obviously a lot more difficult. Q. With regard to Fred, 51 years old, could be playing Champions Tour, what is your take on him and what he's doing right now? STUART APPLEBY: Well, he's a guy that enjoys playing golf. He has not lost his zest for it. He works hard on his game physically and certainly he keeps in the gym. He understands that he knows to keep his body in the right shape. Not sure what his goals are, whether he wants to play five or ten years out there or whether he wants to play out here as long as he can till the stage he plays, until he finds it almost very difficult now to compete and then just walk away from both tours, I don't really know. I think when I'm 51, I would certainly love to be able to, you know, have the ability to play well and play competitive golf on both tours for sure. NELSON SILVERIO: Thank you, Stuart. End of FastScripts |
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