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AT&T NATIONAL

July 6, 2007

Stuart Appleby

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

NELSON SILVERIO: Welcome back, Stuart. Thanks for spending another couple of minutes with us. Notice any difference in the conditions between yesterday and today?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, we had that storm yesterday which softened -- it went quite quiet. We have it a bit easier this morning that be maybe yesterday afternoon for the guys. But today is was blustery by mid morning, maybe ten o'clock it got breezy. I had my sort of few birdies by that stage, and really didn't play too bad on the back nine, but I probably found it the harder nine to score on comfortably. I think it was a lot more difficult than the front nine.

Q. K.J. said a lot of the pins on the back nine were tucked; that they were much more difficult he thought on the back nine.
STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, to some part there was some truth to that for sure. There's some pretty tricky holes. You can certainly be aggressive if you have a scoring club in your hands but these greens were possibly firm and fast. I think just under par, barely under par, might even be leading if at all. Obviously held a U.S. Open here, very difficult to get poa affirm and fast. But you have a really good quality golf course in difficulty, but on the greens is the area that it's playing much more like a normal golf course.

Q. Three more days like today with the wind and not as much rain, how tough will it play?
STUART APPLEBY: There's a couple fairways with tilting angles and that makes the balls bounce weighing down. The greens, I don't see them getting any firmer or faster and pin positions plays some importance definitely. But the difficulty will come from breeze which will then dry the fairways out the most noticeable.

Q. You and K.J. have moved away three shots ahead of the next person and it's kind of filtering back, there are not that many people really close to you. Have you actually managed to put yourselves in good position usually after 36 holes people just say it's too early.
STUART APPLEBY: It is very much too early. There's so much -- we are not way under par, we are not shooting really low so there's a lot of guys just plodding away making a lot of pars and throwing the odd birdie in. But it's not an easy golf course, so you have to show a lot of respect. The rough is long enough where you still have to drive it well. You can't be wayward. You certainly have to pick the right club with the breeze blowing. There's a lot of shots where you are hitting uphill so you have to get the club right and obviously you have to make some putts.
It's a long way to go, a long way to go. There's really some good finishing holes so you don't even contemplate anything until you put out and see where the cards lay.

Q. You have to like D.C., you've won at the Kemper, Top-10 finishes, the area is good for you.
STUART APPLEBY: That question was asked, yes. It has been here a lot of years of my professional life, I have hardly missed any at all. It is a good place. I'm not sure how it compares to other places I've played around ten times each. I can't think of any reason why but certainly having a win in '98, I kicked off a pretty good run I think of performances. So I'd love to have something, maybe another win.
It looks like my roving reporter here has written me down as one, two, three, four Top 10's. So that's okay. But yeah, see if I can put another one in there later this week.

Q. Did you learn anything on the course today that's going to help you for the rest of the tournament?
STUART APPLEBY: No. I already knew what I learned going into today which was you know, drive it as good as you can drive it, position the ball in the fairway, and the greens aren't too quick but there's a couple of pins today where you really had to be under the hole.
So just keep away from those tempting little pins that get close but again the greens being soft, if you do hit a little pull shot into a pin that's four yards left and you have you happen to land it somewhere around the hole you're going to get away with it, but there's some bogeys to be had out there because the scoring is not that low. It's very easy to make some bogeys. I escaped a double on 10 really after hitting a wayward drive, so you can make a mistake and pay more than just dropped shot.

Q. This being Tiger's tournament, you were one of his closest friends early on --
STUART APPLEBY: What, has he dumped me or something? Has he fallen out of love? Did he say something? (Laughter).

Q. We don't see the side of him that a lot of you guys, do.
STUART APPLEBY: You shouldn't, either. He's a disgusting pig. (Laughter).

Q. When you were going through your rough patch personally, he was one of the guys that really came out of nowhere in a sense to come -- a side we don't see of him, come to your house a lot, sort of hang out with you. We don't see that side of him.
STUART APPLEBY: I mean, I guess people would love to think Tiger's got issues, problems or whatever. But he's a normal guy, got his life very well balanced, and understands, now, will have to understand even more, about personal life and commitments to family, but he's always -- you always can ask him a question and you'll never get an I'm busy.
So he's always been there certainly for anybody who wants to ask a question, either be it a mental part of the game, might be a personal thing, or how do you cope with this or how do you do that. I think all great people are willing to share what they have learned, and he's learned a lot in really 20-something years he's been playing the game on a high level and being on TV and dealing with media and so on.
As a young guy -- how old is he now, 30? 31? Look, I've known him for ten years and he hasn't really changed. He's very well balanced and understands, got a real grasp of what is going on, which is great for the top of the TOUR to have someone like that who isn't, you know, blinging it up all over the place and saying and doing silly things. He's really got his head screwed on well.

Q. I guess what I was driving at, he would have been the last person most of us would have pegged to go to the emotional aid of a guy at that time.
STUART APPLEBY: I don't know, well, you may think that. No, I don't. You know, I've always -- I don't know, he's never been anything but supportive or there for a long time. So, you know, I don't know. I guess it's when you have a friend, you know, you don't ever have periods where the friendship becomes stronger or less maybe so much but we've always had a respect, obviously professional respect.
Look, we do a lot of joking around at home stuff at Isleworth and typical idiot sort of stuff. But I don't know, if he thinks life's any different for him emotionally internally than it was five years ago, but it's a difficult situation to be in as a person when you have a person that's a professional, that's a friend that goes through losing someone very close to them, it's a difficult situation that even for myself, if I was put in that situation with somebody else, it makes me feel uncomfortable even though I've got a lot of experience, it's a tricky thing to know what to say or what to think.
I have a lot of people obviously write letters to me and go through similar circumstances and offer advice, and I was happy to write letters back and things like that. But it is a tough situation to put friends in because even now, you don't know what to do. Just knowing they are there is really I guess all a friend has to do anyways.

Q. At what point, I know most players don't like looking at other names on the leaderboard, but at what point is it hard to ignore when Tiger is on the leaderboard?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, pretty much you always expect him to be there so it becomes pretty much standard practice. It's like playing the British Open, expecting it to blow every day: You don't have to look up and know it's windy; you don't have to look up and know Tiger is going to be there.
You can look at it one way or the other and say, well, Tiger Woods is chasing somebody or chasing us down or chasing me down. Or you can turn around and go, well, I expected him to and that's just the way it is and that makes you concentrate more on your own game.
Look, he's pretty good. (Laughter) I think he gets the best breaks though, he get the best draws every week and that's why he's won, he gets the best draws. Skill may have something to do with it.

Q. He got 18 minutes of rain yesterday?
STUART APPLEBY: Well, he must have told them to blow the siren. I thought, there's no lightning, don't we play in the rain? Maybe he's hosting this event in other ways, as well, calling the bloody sirens. (Laughter).
Yeah, you see Tiger Woods on the leaderboard, you know he's not going backwards. So it's up to you to decide on whether you think that's something to be worried about or something, just keep driving on forward. Because you know he doesn't give a rat's ass about what you're doing and he's just going to focus on his game. That's why when he's leading, he just knuckles down and does his thing and knows that if he concentrates and put himself in a position that that's going to apply pressure to everybody else.

Q. Can you assess your game this week? Are you playing well enough to win?
STUART APPLEBY: Yeah, definitely playing well enough to win. Absolutely. Playing well and winning, and playing well and not winning is a very fine line, so you know, it's -- excluding that anyone else does something that you can't control which is another player playing a little bit better, it not easy. When you're not winning, you see guys, Zach Johnson has had a couple of wins this year and you ask Zach this year, he probably felt like, man, how do you win out here, how am I going to win.
Now he's looking, going, man, this is all right, this is pretty cool. He respects that it doesn't happen all the time, but I bet you he feels like, I know how it works now, I think I can do this more and more. But then you have guys, Ernie Els has had a bit of a drought, he's a great player, and you know, it just gets quiet.
Yeah, my game feels good enough to win, for sure. I know what the course is about. I understand the shots that have to be played here, so I've got an understanding. It's just a matter of executing and going and having some fun.
NELSON SILVERIO: Stuart, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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