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BMW CHAMPIONSHIPSeptember 6, 2007Stewart CinkLEMONT, ILLINOIS JOE CHEMYCZ: We welcome Stewart Cink in, Stewart with a 5-under par 66 today, No. 32 on the FedExCup points list. First talk about your round today. You hit 16 of 18 greens, so that was probably a big help for you. STEWART CINK: That is probably a key stat for today, especially with the greens. They're so smooth out there. After the rain they got so smooth. I felt very confident from almost everywhere on the greens. To have a lot of birdie putts like that, you know, it's almost hard not to shoot a pretty low score. Q. There's something about this golf course that fits your eye. You had a good finish here last year, you seem to play well here when you do come. What is it? STEWART CINK: It fits my eye so much that I only played here two times in my career before this year. '97 I missed the cut, didn't play here until last year, and I played really well. Over the 4th of July was a tough time for me because our family is always getting together and we have a big -- almost like a family reunion on the 4th of July. So it was a tournament that I just skipped for personal reasons. But I always have liked the course. Coming back last year and finishing high, it reinforced what I thought about the course. And this year hopefully will lead in the same direction. Q. If I could ask kind of a governmental question, as a member of the policy board, you've probably been reading that guys feel like they've been left out of the political process on some of these FedExCup points. Do you bang your head against the wall? Because I know the information is there if you want to avail yourself of it, and I think you guys are kind of taking a bullet from some of the marquee players for seemingly leaving them out of the decision-making loop. STEWART CINK: Well, yeah, first of all, for anyone who wants to complain about not knowing what the FedExCup structure is like or the scheduling or anything like that, it's been documented for a year now in print that here's how it's going to be, here's how many players are going to be in X tournament, Y tournament, Z tournament. I don't see how you can complain about not knowing, first of all. As far as being left out of the process, I think that a lot of players were asked, just about everybody was given an opportunity. We had player meetings. We had abysmal attendance at player meetings. That's our forum. If you can't take the time to come to the player meeting and voice your opinion, then how else are we supposed to get it? It's hard to talk to every single player and be a full-time player on the TOUR. Q. The onus has got to be on them at some point, right? STEWART CINK: Well, it's on everybody. We're all part of a group of entertainers here. We're all on the same team in a lot of respects from a business perspective. It is a little bit frustrating when players complain about it the way it's all working out, because we all knew what was going to happen. I understand that not everybody likes to play four tournaments in a row. I don't have a complaint about that at all. I don't love playing this many in a row. But it is what it is. To complain about it while it's going on is nothing but an undermining situation. Let's file our complaints after it's over with. Let's see how good we can make it now and then we'll complain about it later and use the complaints to sort of hash things over and maybe improve it, change the system slightly or whatever. But it just doesn't do any good to complain about it right now. Q. Has Tiger, Phil or Ernie ever attended one of those meetings to your knowledge? STEWART CINK: Oh, yeah, absolutely. They come to the meetings. There's several meetings during the year. Sometimes we called a special meeting just for FedExCup. In the past year it's been a hot issue. Yeah, they come to the meetings. Q. The scheduling thing, playing so many events, it seems that you're kind of locked into this again next year, and the Ryder Cup is following it. Are guys just going to have to accept this and try to deal with it as best they can? STEWART CINK: I think next year is going to be more people not playing certain tournaments, especially players in the Ryder Cup, because it's a big tournament for us all. I hope I'm in a position to have to decide that. I wouldn't want to make the Ryder Cup my fifth tournament in a row after four really big ones, plus the PGA and Bridgestone right there. It's going to be a very, very difficult situation next year for everybody. Q. Just kind of adding on that, is there -- if you were the Commissioner or you were his advisor, do you see a way to remedy the situation, to solve the puzzle, maybe putting a week off in there or stretching it? I know you don't want to go against football, but maybe if you can, next year is tough because the Ryder Cup is there, but maybe sliding it back a week or throwing a breather in? What can be done? STEWART CINK: I see what you're saying. It would be great to throw in a week off for everybody, sort of a built-in breather. But the way that contracts are done with TV and with title sponsorships, it's not that easy just to go and say, well, we're going to move back a week. We've got tournaments that line up all the way through November on the Fall Series, and then the Ryder Cup is right there next year, as you mentioned. It's just not going to be as easy as saying let's look at the schedule and use your Excel spreadsheet and move this over here and cut and paste. It's not a cut-and-paste situation. It's extremely complicated dynamics with these contracts. BMW has been planning on being at this tournament for a long time, and in this particular date. They know exactly what events they're going up against on television, and if you move everything back a week or forward a week, then they have to re-plan everything, and they might try to position themselves strategically a different way. So it's a very complicated situation. We'll just call it a situation. And next year we'll probably run into some of this where players don't play and there's a lot of bellyaching about it. It's a reality. I don't think you can ask every single player to play all four. But the fields are great. Minus one or two players, the fields are fantastic. Q. What in your mind, in your opinion, is, A, the FedExCup trying to determine on the golf course, and B, what is it trying to accomplish with the fan base? STEWART CINK: Well, first of all, on the golf course it's trying to name a season-long champion that at the end of the year is crowned. Not something that's done by voting but something that's done with the golf clubs and golf balls. What the FedExCup is trying to do with the fans is it's trying to tie all the tournaments together from tournament A -- from the Sony, I guess, or from Mercedes, all the way through the TOUR Championship Presented by Coca-Cola, trying to get every tournament tied in so there's a relationship and a story developing for the whole year, not just a string of events that are not really interconnected with each other. And then you have a major popping up here and there and then you have a Ryder Cup or a Presidents Cup, just trying to intertwine the whole thing into a thread of competition that has a culmination at the end of the season. Q. Is that with current golf fans in mind or with the mindset of trying to bring new people into the game? STEWART CINK: Well, I'd say both. We would love to have new fans come, but the current fans, I think, also we're targeting to try to give them a little something else to grasp onto. Q. How much tweaking do you think there will be after year one, any idea? STEWART CINK: I don't really have any idea. There's been a lot of different theories. You know, you stand in the locker room or out on the range and you hear different people's ideas, and there's many of them going around. I think there will be some. I'm almost certain there will be some tweaking. How much and to what part of the system, I cannot say. I really don't know. I don't know. If I knew anything, I'd be sure to tell you, but I just don't know. Q. You talk about when you go out on a day like this, you know scores are going to be low, the greens are going to be soft, you're going to be playing lift, clean and place. Do you like that? Is it good for you? And how do you adjust to your approach? STEWART CINK: Well, I don't think you really adjust much. Whether the greens are hard and fast or soft and slow, you still just pick your targets and try to be aggressive and hit it to your target. All you have to adjust really is how far you're going to carry the ball. But you do feel like going out with the greens so smooth, and we're also playing quite a bit earlier, you've got chances to make some birdies, and you're going to have a lot of birdie putts. You don't change your approach to the course that much, but you just have to be ready to try to take it deep basically. Q. Can you explain to people who would love to play golf for millions of dollars, why it is so hard to play four, five, six, seven weekends in a row? STEWART CINK: I think most people when they hear golfers talk about how hard it is to play that many in a row, they think, come on, you're just playing golf. Golf is not a hard sport to play. Competing against the best players in the world is mentally fatiguing and extremely taxing. To try to play against Ernie Els, Tiger Woods, Vijay, it's very hard on you, and it just wears you down over time. When you play great golf consistently like the players at the very top of the FedExCup points list do, it's even more taxing on you. Being in contention is hard on you. Having never been there, it's just difficult to really convey what kind of effect it has on your mental state. That's why you see guys that say, I'm exhausted. I heard the word fatigued this week. I know it sounds crazy, you're hitting 7-irons and drivers and putts. But it's not physical, it's mental. Mentally, these guys out here, and myself included, it's a struggle out there when you try to compete against the very, very best all the time. Q. This tournament is already changed in format because there's no cut and all. Would that be a consideration for maybe trying to fit the schedule, maybe trying to make some changes in the format again? STEWART CINK: You mean to keep golf in Chicago? Q. No, I'm thinking like instead of four-day tournaments, three-day or move it one day or change it so we can bring it together without cutting any tournaments. STEWART CINK: I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. I don't see the formats of these tournaments changing, like reducing them to 54-hole or anything like that. It sounds like we are going to be moving this tournament around from Chicago to other places in the Midwest, and that's going to leave Chicago without golf every other year, and that's a shame. But as far as changing the format to make it a little lighter on players, I think that compromises the competition more than having a marquee player or two not show up. Q. Talk about your game a little bit. You've been playing better since the British and had a pretty good run. What triggered that and how do you feel this week? STEWART CINK: Well, I don't know. I wish I could just put my finger right on what it is because then I would always have it right there in front of me. It just feels really relaxed on the golf course today and the past really half a year, felt pretty relaxed. I'm driving the ball pretty good, and I've somehow picked up some extra power that I really can't explain. It's been fun playing. When my putts drop -- usually I'm a pretty good putter, but the last few weeks I've been a little iffy, and when the putts drop I'm really playing well. I feel like with these greens -- I feel like I can read these greens pretty well, and when I can read them I feel like I'm going to make some, so I'm looking forward to playing the rest of the week. JOE CHEMYCZ: Stewart, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. End of FastScripts |
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