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JOHN DEERE CLASSICJuly 11, 2007Brian BatemanSILVIS, ILLINOIS JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Brian Bateman, thanks for joining us here. Your first tournament here at the John Deere Classic since winning the Buick Open two weeks ago. It must have been an exciting week for you, and I'm sure you got a lot of phone calls and congratulations from other players and your friends and family and things like that. Maybe just talk about first your win and then kind of the week after, how that was. BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, the week flew by, obviously. I got home Monday and had a lot of phone calls, a lot of text messages from players and reps and ex-players and friends and got some great heartfelt letters from people that I really had met over time and didn't remember, either in a Pro-Am or had seen me play somewhere and I'd signed a golf ball for. It's been great, something that I never really had any expectations. But the whole week at home the phone was ringing off the hook. Then we had the holiday and it was raining every day so I didn't get to practice much, so I kind of came in here rusty, believe it or not. I haven't been playing a whole lot. But I'm still on a high mentally. I've got to hit some balls, though. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Maybe just talk about the last few holes of the tournament kind of just for the people that weren't there, just maybe go through it and your emotions and what it was like to hoist that winner's trophy for the first time. BRIAN BATEMAN: You know, it was a great week obviously with the results, but I was really proud of myself for staying in the moment all week. I worked really hard on that after the first round. And then coming down the stretch, playing with Scott Verplank, knowing that he was going to be close to the lead, just based on his experience and how he had been playing, you know, he's very consistent off the tee, he's a good putter, he's played the Ryder Cup last year, I believe. So I knew he was going to be close to the lead, and I figured if I could stay pretty close to him that I would be close to the lead. And my putter really bailed me out. I was playing well but I needed to make some putts to win the tournament, and the putter maintained -- the birdie on the 72th hole to win your first tournament is a pretty neat thing. A lot of players have told me that they were watching and rooting for me and they yelled when the putt went in, so they pretty much had the same reaction I did. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: A nice tournament to win with Vijay, Tiger, Jim Furyk, a lot of those guys kind of having won there the last couple years. Nice to put your name on that trophy. BRIAN BATEMAN: Yeah, I think that says a lot about the golf course and the people and the town. Warwick Hills is your basic traditional golf course where everything is right in front of you. You obviously have to be a pretty good putter to win there, but you have to make putts, and the greens can be tricky. But it's a thrill to win any tournament, but to win the tournament that those guys -- Tiger and Vijay have pretty much dominated that event the last five years, so that's -- although they weren't there, I think it was still pretty neat to win there. Q. You play a game where confidence is so important. What's it going to be like when you tee it up on Thursday coming off a win, a totally different experience, and how will that change your game do you think? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, it'll be interesting to see. I've thought about that a lot the last few days, really not knowing how I'm going to react. I know that obviously I haven't been playing much the last few days so I tried to get some work in this morning. I didn't get here until late yesterday afternoon, but I'm still going to try to play my game. My expectations I think on the golf course aren't going to change. You know, I may have a little more patience or I may be a little more aggressive at times, but I'm still a pretty conservative player. I try to play the percentages for the most part. I think I've got a great pairing this week with Mark Wilson who won earlier this year, kind of a storybook deal like mine was when he won at the Honda, and then your defending champion here, John Senden. We'll have lot of fun. The golf course is in tremendous shape, as it always is, and I think that adds to the field. I think that brings guys here because they work so hard to get the course as good as they can, and they've bent over backwards this week. It's great. Q. Sometimes people say success can be almost as hard to deal with as not succeeding, particularly right after you've done it. You've been hungry and grinding away. Is it going to be hard to be as focused right in the immediate wake of that victory? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, I think so. This has all been new to me, obviously. I haven't been through this in a long time, since I won on the Nike Tour, the Nationwide Tour, almost ten years ago. And I have had problems in the past when I have had a little bit of success, maybe lose focus and kind of sit on my tail and just let things happen instead of continuing to work hard. So I made a vow to myself last week, and I told my wife the same thing when I was at home, that I didn't just want to rest this time, I wanted to continue to work hard, set some new goals, keep moving forward. I think it will change my schedule a little bit, so I'll be able to focus more on where I'm going to play, and maybe the courses and the venues that I'm going to see, whereas leading up to this I was pretty much stuck playing where I could get in because I couldn't get in any tournaments. But I'm going to continue to work hard. I'd love to play the TOUR Championship and I'm going to have to play my way into that. I'm pretty much guaranteed the first two FedEx tournaments. The third one is pretty close now, even if I didn't do much more the rest of the year. So I'm trying to have new goals and trying to stay focused on that, but it's going to be difficult because there's so many people congratulating you and there's so many people telling you you've done great things that you get a little complacent at times, and I'm trying to avoid that. Q. Working through Q-school and then getting into the Buick Open, winning the Buick Open, how does that just help for confidence at this point in your career? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, it's huge for me because I've worked so hard for so long. You know, you never really know if it's ever going to happen. You have dreams that everything works out, and it takes so much now, now that I can reflect back on last week or a week and a half ago in Flint, how many things have to go right to win a tournament. Unless you win by a half a dozen shots, it's what you do and it's also what everyone else does. I think that after looking back at the tournament and knowing that I did just about everything I could do and still squeaked out a victory, if you will, with three guys that were -- two of them on the range getting ready to go to a playoff and Woody waiting in the scorer's tent, that it's just one shot and it can make or break you. So there's a lot that goes into winning. I'm just -- I feel -- I'm so grateful that it happened and I'm so grateful that my wife was there because I always hoped if I ever won out here that she would be a part of it. And I think her being there brought everything full circle. Q. From an Xs and Os standpoint, what parts of your game have been clicking? What have you been working on that's come together? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, it's been a combination of things. I've always been an above-average ball striker. I've always been a streaky putter, and I'm trying to bring those two a little closer together and hope that they match up one week, and it happened in Flint. But my mind game, I've been working on that, as well, with a new sports psychologist, and he's instilled in me a lot of training aids, if you will, things to work on off the golf course, that have allowed me -- hopefully helped me to stay focused a little more and not get ahead of myself because I was the world's worst at thinking about what could have been or trying to evaluate why something happened, which is the worst thing you can do on the golf course, especially at this level because once it's gone, it's gone. You can't bring it back. I was pretty bad about evaluating why I hit a certain shot or why a putt didn't break enough, or what have you. He's been a tremendous help. But in Flint everything just came together. I putted well all week. I stayed out of trouble for the most part. And then my nerves were fairly calm. So with those three together, still I only won by one shot. That goes back to my point of how hard it is to win out here and how deep the fields are. There's so many guys that can win every week. It doesn't have to be Tiger and Phil and Vijay. There's 150 guys out here that can win on any week, and I think we showed that -- I think I showed it in Flint being the Cinderella guy, and the week before in Hartford with Jay Williamson and Hunter Mahan, it can happen. I'm just going to try to -- my swing is starting to come around, my putting has gotten better, but I think for the most part, my mental game has been the strongest. Q. What's the saying that I heard somewhere, the two things that kill a golfer are anticipation and reflection while they're playing; you can't do either. What do you think about, just blinders? What were you thinking about during the fourth round at Buick? What was in your mind? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, the front nine I was just trying to get into a groove, getting used to being close to the lead, TV cameras. There was a lot going on there that I hadn't been around, hadn't been exposed to, the cameras following you every shot. I think you get used to the crowds the first half a dozen tournaments you play in out here because the crowds are pretty big every week. But having cameras scurrying around and a lot more noise and distractions and so forth, the first nine holes I was just trying to get into a groove and get myself in position for the back side. And then coming down the stretch, the last three or four holes, when I got up-and-down on 16 from the bunker and Scott made birdie, I knew game was on between us. I felt like it was between the two of us because I still hadn't looked at the scoreboard, believe it or not. Some people still think that I'm not telling the truth there, but I really hadn't. I knew in my gut that we were close. I felt like it was between the two of us. But coming down the stretch, it was just all I could think about was process. That's what I've been working on mentally is the process and how many thousands of putts I've had and how many shots I've hit on the range where it's kind of an old wives' tale, but if you can do that on the golf course and make it seem simple then you're better off. You can't look at a ten-footer to win the tournament and say it's to win the tournament. You have to address it as a ten-footer and what the speed is and what the slope is and what the break is. And if you can contain yourself and those thoughts, that just might lower your heartbeat a half a beat, and that could make the difference in getting a putt started on-line or not. I think coming down the stretch, the biggest -- one of the things I'm most proud of is that I stayed in the moment. Q. You talked about the ten years between the wins. How many times did you question your choice of profession, and did you think about maybe it wasn't for you? Did you ever get that close? BRIAN BATEMAN: I never got that far. I definitely had some downtime, and that's what -- I applaud my wife for that, for the support she gave. You just never really know out here. I always felt like I had the game to play well, I was just, here again, trying to evaluate why I hadn't played better instead of addressing what may have been the problem. I was blind to the fact that maybe my own evaluation was holding me back. What I was thinking at the time was the evaluation was helping, and maybe it was not. I'm going blank on your question. I'm thinking about my sports psychologist again with all this evaluating. What was the question again? Q. Did you ever question your choice of profession? BRIAN BATEMAN: So I never got to that point. Part of the reason why is I always seemed to get through Q-school. I never fell completely flat on my back. I would have one good tournament and struggle 95 percent of the year but then I would get through Q-school, and it was a fresh start for the next year. Then I would struggle again and throw in my token one good tournament and struggle all the way through the summer and then I would get through Q-school again. So I think if I had ever failed at the finals and had to go back to the Nationwide or maybe not even gotten through second stage and lost Nationwide status, maybe I would have had those thoughts. But I never fell that far. Q. The pressures of Q-school have to be just as equal as playing in a regular tournament knowing you're kind of playing for your life. BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, Q-school is a totally different monster. It's hard to describe seeing guys -- you see shots at Q-school you've never seen before, and you hope that you're watching them and not performing them. But for some reason, at Q-school I'm always calm and I always know that it's six days and it's a marathon, and you just have to pace yourself and not get ahead of yourself. Here I am explaining the reasons why I think I've lacked success out here mentally. Q-school is where I was the strongest mentally. And my sports psychologist for the last year and a half has been trying to get me to transfer those Q-school thoughts to a weekly basis out here, and that's for some reason been difficult to do. But the finals at Q-school is just a grind, and it's such a long year and you're ready for a break, and then you have to jump into that for six rounds. It's right around the Christmas holidays when most of us have been going at it pretty hard for ten months already and are looking for a break. It's not any fun for any of us. Q. You've been asked this before I'm sure about a dozen times, but it's like a boxer; once a guy holds a title, for the rest of his life he's a champ no matter what he does. You're a winner now. Are you going to be able to draw on the experience you've had in future situations, or is that knowledge going to help you through the ups and downs of TOUR life? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, I think that next time in position, hopefully this week, that I will have known that I've done it before, whereas in Flint it was kind of an unknown, even myself, if I could do it or not. So I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to see how much more clearly I can think and how much calmer I can remain, knowing that I've done it before. But I think after being home for two or three days and finally realizing what I had done in Flint and listening to all the emails and -- reading all the emails and reading all the letters that I got from people all over the country, I think that's when it hit me that I had really done something special and had touched a lot of people's lives, especially where I'm from, a small town in Louisiana, kind of the hometown kid, if you will. And it's something that I will never forget. I mean, I've done something that many guys haven't done, and that's win a TOUR event. Now that I know how hard it is to do and how perfect things have to match up and how difficult -- mentally how -- as much as you want to do it, if it's ever going to happen, how special it was, and I think that's a neat feeling. And now ever since Michigan, every morning I wake up, I kind of remind myself that "you're a PGA TOUR winner." That's a pretty neat title to have. Q. Looking ahead -- you've played here quite a few times, haven't you? This course and this tournament has been here for about eight years. How is this tournament maturing and coming along as a course and as a tournament in your estimation? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, I think venue plays an important factor, where guys play. I think schedule has something to do with it, but I think venue has something to do with players choosing a certain tournament. Personally I think this is one of the best TPCs we have. We have a lot of good ones, but I think this one is close to the top. The people here are always been wonderful to players. The sponsors have always been great to players. I think guys enjoy coming here. You know, I was not on TOUR before it was played here at this golf course, so I can't reflect on how it was at the other ones, but I do know that guys enjoy coming here. Everything about the tournament, the director and all the people involved with the tournament do all they can to try to get us to Milwaukee or give us the dig they had last night with the tractors. I think he's been out two or three times this year, and he called me after the Flint victory. They do all the little things that make a tournament special, combine that with a great venue. I think that's why you draw the field that you have. Q. Woody Austin was just in here and someone asked him, when you win, you're going to get a lot more chances to play other bigger tournaments, but he says he's going to stay loyal to tournaments like this and Memphis and Buick because that's what made his career, not British Opens and so forth. Assuming you're going to continue to have success, will you still be back at the John Deere Classic and tournaments of this level? BRIAN BATEMAN: Well, I'm like Woody, I've always tried to stay true to my roots. The tournament in Jackson, Mississippi, in the fall, that's going to be after the TOUR Championship. It's not a part of the FedExCup Series. I think it's part of the Fall Finish. They gave me a sponsor exemption ten years ago my first year as a pro, so it's going to be hard for me to skip that one. I think luckily it falls when the LSU football game that weekend happens to be away, so that's a good thing because I'm going to set my schedule up in the fall around the football games in Baton Rouge because I've never had the luxury before. David Toms picks on me all the time that he sets up his schedule, unless he has to play somewhere, around the LSU football schedule, so I'm going to do the same thing. But to answer your question, the smaller venues that I've been a part of, because I've seen the Nike Tour and I've seen the smaller venues out here because I never have gotten in the bigger ones, those are the tournaments that I've played in the most and the tournament directors that I know the best, so I'm going to be loyal to those people, too, because they treat every one of us like we're Tiger Woods. They treat us all the same. They do all they can to make the tournament a special week for everyone involved. And by me being in these tournaments for so many years, I'm going to try to play as many of them as I can because these are fun events for us. These are the tournaments that I kind of got my feet wet on TOUR was the smaller venues and the ones that weren't the World Golf Championships and the majors and so forth. So yes, I am going to play the smaller ones. I shouldn't say smaller in a derogatory way; just the ones that I've never gotten into I don't know much about, so I'm going to stick with my schedule and try to maintain that schedule as long as I can. JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Brian, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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