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GINN SUR MER CLASSIC AT TESOROOctober 26, 2007Daniel ChopraPORT ST. LUCIE, FLORIDA DOUG MILNE: Thanks for joining us. Bogey free through 46 holes, 7-under 66 today. Just a couple comments on the state of the game, how are you feeling playing here? DANIEL CHOPRA: I've been driving the ball beautifully. Pretty much second half of the year, and this is a golf course you need to do that on. You can't miss these fairways, not if you want to make lots of birdies, anyway. And I've hit most of them for the most part. The ones that I missed, I just barely missed on the first cuts. I don't think I've had a real rough shot yet. Couple times I have been in the rough, I've had wedges and I've had decent lies. I've been fortunate to keep it where I'm supposed to have it so far. DOUG MILNE: Couple weeks ago you posted your best finish of the year, T3 in Texas. Are you doing anything differently? You just commented on what's going right. Have you made any tweaks to your game that's got you going in the right direction? DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, yeah. This year I did quite a bit of work on my game. I felt like I needed to start driving the ball straighter, which I've had tremendous success with what I did. And driving has just been as good as it's ever been. My iron play, I started hitting my irons well last year along with the putting. That's part of the reason I've been playing so well. My iron play this year started out really good. As the year progressed I felt like I was pushing it, and I was driving it well, which was the part that was letting me down. As soon as I started doing that, I felt like I should start winning now. I forced it, I guess. I wasn't allowing the birdies to happen. I was just trying to push it too hard. I raised my expectations too quickly. In Texas I birdied the first, I made a few birdies on my front nine. And it was like a relief that finally, wow, this is nice. I don't feel like I'm pushing anymore. I played that whole week that way. I just allowed myself to be patient and not force those birdies to come, and they came. DOUG MILNE: It's certainly working for you this week. We'll open it up and take a few questions. Q. You talk about how you guys feed off each other, and it certainly seemed like you did in the first few rounds. Can you be specific as to how that helps you and how you guys can kind of fuel each other with the birdies? DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, sometimes you get that feel when everybody's playing well. This week I don't know if it affected me at all. I hope it didn't affect me because I don't want to be in a situation where I feel like if I'm playing with somebody tomorrow that's not playing well, that I stop as well. I don't think it affected me this week. Some weeks I know it's a lot of fun, we're all laughing and joking and making a lot of birdies. I feel I stayed focused this week. I wasn't paying that close attention to what was going on. I know Bob was making a lot of birdies yesterday. I didn't have his card. So I looked up at the leaderboard on 9, as a matter of fact, to see, how is he 8 under for the day? And I looked and I saw he made six in a row, wow. As I was looking, I heard this clunk, and I looked and he made another 40-footer. It was actually funny, the timing. He looked at me and smiled as I looked away from the board, and he looked at me and I looked and the ball was in the hole. That was kind of funny, really. That was the kind of state of mind I was in. Today, I was just trying to make more birdies and not make any bogeys. I really wasn't that affected. But you are right, there are some times when it does pull you along. But I don't think it really affected me too much this week. Q. You talked earlier about how that stretch of birdies in Texas gave you a nice little boost. How much from week to week when you change venues and travel and all that, how much does momentum outside of the confidence factor? DANIEL CHOPRA: Oh, it's everything. Absolutely everything. In my book, momentum is absolutely everything. I don't think anybody would say otherwise, either. It's a simple case if you birdie the first few holes and you have a 15-footer for birdie at the fourth. You're just thinking 'Wow, wouldn't it be better if I made this?' But if I don't, I already made three in a row, I don't have to make this one. And it eases that pressure and state of mind kind of relaxes a little bit. You say give it a go and see if it goes in. And it goes in. And the next birdie becomes even. It's all momentum. Vice versa, if you hit four balls real close, you miss all four, then that fifth one, you shouldn't, but you subconsciously try harder. You feel like you deserve it, nobody deserves anything, but you feel like you do. Q. How did you feel about the scoring conditions out there today with it being a little bit wet? It seemed at the time you played yesterday, the conditions were better. How did it compare from yesterday? DANIEL CHOPRA: I don't know if the scoring conditions were better from yesterday. I think the wind was a little harder yesterday in the afternoon. But I think people maybe faulted because all the good scores came late. It was only me, Bob, really, it was only Bob and Tommy. I shot 6. So it was those two guys. I think maybe I skewed the feelings of people a little bit. But the wind was really hard. It played tough yesterday. I thought it played hard. When it's this heavy in the air, and it's overcast and humid and the wind blows. That wind is a 10, 15-mile-an-hour wind, it is a good 25-mile-an-hour wind on a dry day, because the air's so much heavier. So it really affects the ball. It plays so long, this golf course is stretched out to the max. If you get a foot, you're lucky. It is really tough. Then today the wind started picking up a little bit from the back nine from a slightly different direction. It looks like it's starting to swirl around now. I think we'll have different wind every day, which is good for the golf course. It makes play different every day. Q. You said yesterday you were traveling to Orlando from here? DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah, as soon as I'm done with this, I'm going to get on the Turnpike. Those cops better watch out. Q. How much of a help is it to stay in your own bed? DANIEL CHOPRA: Oh, I love it. As much as I play, as much as I travel, that is part of the reason I'm going home. When I get back home tonight, I'm going to be as far away from golf as I possibly can be. I'll be home. I'll watch my own TV on my own couch. I'll eat my wife's great cooking. She'll make a great meal for me tonight. It just makes you feel a lot more relaxed. Q. That's motivation. DANIEL CHOPRA: Hopefully, I'll get it done tonight so I won't have a late tee time. Q. How long of a commute is it? DANIEL CHOPRA: Doing the speed limit (laughing)? Who is watching? It takes me about an hour and 45 minutes, all downhill though. Q. Last year you came close to winning a couple times. Can you talk about what you think it will take to get a win out here? DANIEL CHOPRA: I feel if I play the way I'm playing right now I can win this week. I have two more days to keep continuing this kind of form. But, obviously, it becomes more and more difficult to score as the week goes on. You get closer and closer to that finish line especially for your first, well not my first ever win, but my first win on the PGA TOUR. Again, it's a big thing. If you make a couple of birdies early in the round, everything's good and rosy. Even if I don't make some birdies early, I want to feel like I can go ahead and not push anything and go after pins that I don't feel comfortable. Going after them and just allow it to happen. It's just a practice of patience. That's what it's going to be. Q. If you're driving back and forth, the wake-up call this morning, the alarm went off at in order for you to get here in time? DANIEL CHOPRA: I stayed last night. Last night I stayed because of the early tee time today. I think I woke up at 8:00, which is just fine for yesterday's tee time. Even if we go two tees tomorrow, I'm assuming the last group will be at 11:00. So it's still going to be 7:00 o'clock. Q. I assumed that you were here last night. DANIEL CHOPRA: Yeah, yeah. Q. The other thing I want to ask you, the last question was you've been close a few times. Is it an advantage, disadvantage? Does it not matter at all when it looks like the whole leaderboard right now is a lot of guys in the same situation? Guys that have either never won on Tour or guys that haven't won in a long time on Tour. Does that make it a mental survival of the fittest as well? DANIEL CHOPRA: I mean I'm not thinking about that. I'm definitely not thinking about that. I'm not looking at the leaderboard and looking at guys who have won and haven't won. When was the last time they did win? No matter what, somebody will still play well. Somebody's still going to go out and shoot a pair of 67s or 66s on the weekend no matter what. No matter who they are and no matter how many times they've won. So I still have to keep going and beat that. So it's not like everybody's going to back off now and shoot even par for the weekend. So it means nothing nowadays. I was reading an article in the paper this morning about how it's almost like we're getting short-changed by the fans, and they don't really realize how much of celebrity-playing people don't watch. There is some great golf out here. It doesn't matter if you've won or you haven't. Everybody out here is just as good. And there is not one person in the gallery that could tell a difference between the shot that any one of us guys up near the lead are hitting or what Tiger Woods or Mickelson would hit. Nobody can tell the difference. The quality's there. Q. Did you (indiscernible). DANIEL CHOPRA: I hit it on the fairway just about every hole. So I took full advantage. Q. How much of a difference does that make in something like this? DANIEL CHOPRA: If I had to play the ball as it lay for two days, I'm at 13 under right now? I would say I might be lucky to be under par. That's how much of a difference it makes. And it should make. If you hit the ball on the fairways, you should have a good lie. You should have a good, fair lie. The ball is, I was saying, you can make the fairway the size of your fist. It's not just a pitch mark. I mean it just explodes, it is so wet. The ball has so much mud, sometimes the entire ball is covered with mud, not just half of it. So we definitely need to have lift, clean and place. If you hit the ball on that beautiful little fairway they made for us this week, you need a really decent lie. Q. I think it was on 14 you had a fairly reasonable birdie putt and you saw the line from the putt before you and it didn't drop. I was wondering did you feel like you left a shot out there or was that a situation where you had made so many birdies early on? DANIEL CHOPRA: Well, I knew that Bob and I were tied at the time. You know, you play little games. Everybody. You'd like to have the lead. So I was playing a little mental game, let's just say this is Sunday, and this is the back nine. I thought let's just play like a rehearsal. See what we can get at. For the most part, most putts on the back nine there were a few times he was putting after me, but early on the back nine I was putting after him, and he missed his. So I felt like I had that open door to get ahead. I was just playing mental games with myself to rehearse for Sunday, hopefully. I was having decent putts. I guess I maybe didn't rim them just right, and maybe the speed was off on a couple of them. Q. So 16, I saw you kind of looking at the leaderboard. DANIEL CHOPRA: Those leaderboards are so nice, sometimes I just want to watch TV, you know. That big old wide screen plasma. There is some pretty good video on there sometimes. DOUG MILNE: If you would just run through and give us some clubs on the birdies. DANIEL CHOPRA: The first hole I hit a pretty long drive, and I only had about 68 yards to the hole and I hit lob wedge in there and spun back four feet. On 2, I hit a 3-wood right in front of the green, and hit a flop shot in there to about a foot or two. On 6, I sky-ed my 3-wood a little bit, and I didn't reach the fairway. That was one of the few fairways I missed. I hit a 6-iron from there to 25 feet. That was one of the good putts I did make. The par-5 seventh, I hit it on the greenside bunker in two and off the bunker in two, pretty straight-forward. On 8, I hit a pitching wedge to 3 feet, made that. On 9, I hit a lob wedge from 75 yards, 80 yards or so to about 12 feet and made that. And I two-putted 16 for birdie. DOUG MILNE: Good luck on the weekend. DANIEL CHOPRA: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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