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MERCEDES-BENZ CHAMPIONSHIP 2008December 31, 2007Paul GoydosKAPALUA, HAWAII STEWART MOORE: Welcome to sunny Maui. PAUL GOYDOS: I'm pretty busy so I only have a minute. Q. Different tournament, same state. Getting some good vibes coming back here? PAUL GOYDOS: Absolutely. I'm surprised. If you would have asked me a year ago if I'd be playing Mercedes, I'd say no. Yeah, it's good. I've always liked it over here. I've always liked Waialae. I actually played this event when it was the Kapalua International. Q. Like the year-end thing? PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, I played that two or three times, and I was very disappointed that that went away, but I guess people here are happy it became the Mercedes Championship. It was much easier to get into that event than this one. But I think the Mercedes is almost the most important tournament of the year. This is the event you play in because you accomplished at least for one week the goals that you have every week. I can't imagine, what, 35 players playing this week? Q. 31. PAUL GOYDOS: So I think there's a few guys not here. It's a pretty hard field. Take away the Grand Slam of Golf and it's a pretty hard field to get in. I have the goal every year to be playing in Mercedes. STEWART MOORE: Off-season doing some practicing? PAUL GOYDOS: I did some work. We had some funny weather in California but I did some work. I'm hoping that when the flag goes up something will show up along with it. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I'm at the age now where I'm prepared and we'll see what happens Thursday. I'm not unhappy with my preparation. Q. Take your choice, pick one tournament you played in, they probably go hand in hand, but more important to be here or the TOUR Championship? What would you take if you can only take one? PAUL GOYDOS: Here. Here means you've won. If you look at my year, I had a win and a bunch of mediocre finishes. Reality is I'm going to play low 20 events this year, and my goal is to win low 20 events this year. I'm prepared to do that. If you do that once, that's not bad. I win one half of one percent of the events I play in, but that's what it's about. It's not just the win, it's the work and getting in that position and playing that last nine holes. That's the real enjoyment of golf. I don't get to do it very often, but when you get to do it that's the special feeling. Tiger does it every week. That's really what it's about. And I got the chance to win a couple times. I should have won maybe three or four other times, but that's what it's about, is just challenging yourself in that situation. So definitely I would rather be here. I may be the minority answering that question. Q. I don't know what the answer is. PAUL GOYDOS: I think the answer is you're here to win, and playing in the TOUR Championship doesn't mean you won. There are plenty of guys who can be in the Top 30 without winning. To me I would rather finish 70th with a win. Q. You won in '96 at Bay Hill, so what was it you played in '97 as a reward for that? PAUL GOYDOS: '96 I played The Masters, '96 I played the World Series, and '97 I would have played the Mercedes -- it was called the Mercedes and it was at La Costa. That was the year Tiger -- his first year, and they had the playoff. They had a one-hole playoff and he had one swing on Sunday, and it was like, okay. He took a boat over to the green and tapped in for his two and that was it. I think he beat Tom. Q. I think Tom hit it in the water. PAUL GOYDOS: He might have. I finished fourth, me and Guy Boros finished fourth. Q. Did you go to the Masters last year? PAUL GOYDOS: Yes. I was there. I played 36 holes (laughter). That golf course is just -- that to me was the biggest achievement of anybody on Tour last year, was Zach Johnson winning The Masters. Not that he can't play. The golf course is totally against him. He didn't go for a par 5 in two and he won The Masters. That's one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of this sport, to win that tournament never going for a par 5. Never. That's impossible. I guarantee you that's never happened in that tournament's history, end of discussion. Q. So what's a bigger surprise, him winning The Masters or you winning Sony? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't think surprise is the right word. I think it's a bigger surprise I won the Sony. I don't want to take anything away from his talent. It's not a surprise he won The Masters, it's an unbelievable accomplishment. Definitely winning the Sony. Zach Johnson is going to win double digit events out here and probably a couple majors. Q. Do you ever wonder how much things have changed, what has gone on between your two victories? The course from the first time you had seen it to now, the fact that you go to La Costa and now Kapalua -- PAUL GOYDOS: The biggest change is just the players. I have a couple of friends who got to the second stage of Tour school and missed, a couple guys got in the finals and missed. Just the depth of play. There's 22-year-old kids -- Ryan Moore. I think Kevin Na gets out here, and at 22 he's ready to be successful. At 22 I didn't know which way was up. The level of talent that's here is just nuts. Second stage is now like the finals when I was going to Tour school. It's just a different world we live in now to getting out here. The talent level that's out there is outrageous. Q. Do you think you can beat anyone on any given day or week? PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah. If you don't feel like that you should do something else. That's what you're striving to do, working to do. I was talking to somebody this morning about Tiger Woods, and he keeps working on his game to try to get better. Look what he did in 2000 and he won the four majors in a row. Has anybody ever had a better year than he had in 2000 ever? What he's tried to do since then is find a way to get better, and now he is actually better. I think the Tiger of, say, '96 when he first came on TOUR, that Tiger today might not win more than one or two events. He's had to improve his game to stay above everyone else because everyone else is getting better, and Tiger feels like he needs to get better. But having said that, I'm playing my best game, and I'll take my chances. Q. When you look at the major venues this year, can he win the slam? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know what they are. You've got Augusta -- Q. Torrey Pines. PAUL GOYDOS: That's two. Q. Birkdale, where he was one shot out of the playoff -- PAUL GOYDOS: Is Birkdale par 70? Q. Yeah. PAUL GOYDOS: And where is the PGA? Q. Oakland Hills. PAUL GOYDOS: I don't think that the rotation is going to make a difference with his talent. I think he's showed everybody -- if there was ever a weakness, and I don't personally believe there is -- actually I played with him in the practice round at Pebble Beach in 2000, and I never want to look at that again. That was ridiculous how good that was. I could not have beaten that. I have to admit that. The best my game could have been, I couldn't have shot 1-under at Pebble Beach that way. No way. That being said, look what he did at Southern Hills. Everyone said the golf course didn't fit him. Look what he did at Liverpool. He's hitting 7-irons into holes other guys are hitting wedges, and he won that tournament. The rotation is not going to be any deciding factor whether he wins the Grand Slam. It's going to be him. Q. What was the biggest factor for you last year at Sony? PAUL GOYDOS: Putting. I had a little shaky stretch at the end of the third round, beginning of the fourth round. I actually three-putted 16 on Saturday and I three-putted 1 on Sunday from nowhere, just puking my guts out all over the place, and then for some reason it mellowed out and I made some decent putts. I made a 25-footer on 15, I made a bomb on -- 20-footer for birdie on 9, and I made a 25-footer for 15 for birdie, and I made a 20-footer on 16 for birdie. I was as nervous as could be. I think the advantage is I didn't really think I had a chance to win. I had three or four shots back at the turn, I'll say, to Charles Howell and Luke Donald. I played with Luke Donald the day before. I had never played with him or seen him play. He's got an impressive game, really impressive game. I was doing the best I can but I was thinking I needed to birdie out maybe. I birdied 12. 13 you're trying to make a par, and then 14 is a hole you can make birdie. 16 is a hole you can make birdie and maybe make an eagle, but I made the putt on 16. And the funny thing about Sony, it changes. The leaderboard on 15 and the leaderboard on 16, they're behind trees. You can't see them. The fans can see them, I'm assuming, but you're standing on the green next to the hole, and you look at the leaderboard and there's a big tree there. So I make the putt on 16 and I look over, and I look at the leaderboard and it's a tree. So somebody else is putting, Ted Purdy, and I look over and say, who's leading? Oh, I am. I had no idea at that point. I had no idea I was leading the tournament when I made that putt. And then I proceeded to bogey 17. Golf will get to you eventually. Then I got lucky on 18 and made birdie. Both times I won at Bay Hill, Bay Hill they didn't have electronic leaderboards. Arnold didn't want them. They have the hand ones. They had one behind the 14th green, and I was maybe, whatever I was at the time, maybe 11-under, and I was tied for the lead or something. So I made a good par on 11, I birdied 12, I parred 13, and then I birdied -- hit a great shot on 14, like this, to make birdie. I looked up at the leaderboard and I've got a three-shot lead. If there had been a leaderboard like there is now who knows how that affects you. There's not another leaderboard until 16 fairway. So I saw no reason to go for 16. I saw no reason to ever hit my ball over water again, and I didn't, to be honest with you, just carved it around the deal on 18. Actually that's the funny thing about Bay Hill, is how much it's changed on -- I hit 7-iron into 18 on Sunday. I'm in the top 200 in driving distance (laughter), but I'm not any higher than that. Nowadays it's so much softer out there. You can't even drive it down the hill. I'm hitting a loot of 4-irons into that hole now. The golf course used to really run. That was the one bizarre moment of Sony, is when I looked at the leaderboard on 16 green to find out who was leading, and it was me. That's really not something that happens very often. I'm a leaderboard watcher. I watch them constantly. I watch them the first nine holes. You can't see them at Sony, which I think is odd. Q. You look at the gap between victories out here, I mean, obviously you show up every week thinking you want to win this week. Is that just a reality of this game, how hard it is to win, or how long a gap does that seem? PAUL GOYDOS: It was a long gap, but I think that of that 10 and a half years, Tiger was involved in 10 of those years, and he's taken some events from me. He won six or seven times every year, I would imagine. He probably averages -- he's won 60 times in 11 years or some crazy number like that. If you would have told me when I won that for the next -- from '97 through '07 that some guy was going to win 60 times, I would say that you're out of your mind. There's just no way. That's not going to happen. If you win three events in a year, that's just incredible with the talent that's out here. At that time Ernie Els was coming out, Phil Mickelson had been around since the early 90s. No one is going to come out here -- and then it just went berserk. He had a year where he only won one. Q. In '04 he only won once, '98 and '04. PAUL GOYDOS: So those other years, that's impressive. Q. You had him one up for a while. PAUL GOYDOS: I went up to him at The Masters. I won, and then he won like 52, no he won 55, and then I won again. I saw him at The Masters and said, you know, you need to get to 110 a lot faster than 11. I mean, this is ridiculous. This 15-event stuff. Q. You finished well in a late-season event? PAUL GOYDOS: I finished second. If people would have asked me would it carry over, I'd said no way. Weather-wise, golf course, grass-wise very similar, not the same course, but they have some similarities. To be honest with you, somebody asked when I walked out on the 10th hole, I remember -- I think it was the 10th hole in the Pro-Am on Monday, and it felt very comfortable. It was like I had just finished second the week before. Q. But it was like almost two months before? PAUL GOYDOS: It was ten weeks. Q. So carry over but not carry over, but you had the same feeling? PAUL GOYDOS: Pretty much. Surprisingly I would have said there's no way that's going to happen. And to be honest with you, if Hawaii had been the next week I would have said it's most likely not going to happen, just based on my history. Wailea has always been a very comfortable place for me to play. I've always liked it there. It was the very first event on the PGA TOUR. It was the first cut I ever missed on the PGA TOUR. I'll never forget that. I teed off in the last group off 10, and it's howling. Now that I've played there enough it's blowing like it was always blowing. You barely can stand up on the tee and you hit it down and you're going with your 8-iron like this and I'm trying to hit some low things and I hit in the middle of the green and I have a 20-footer, and the wind is blowing and I hit it up there and somehow get it in for par. Wow, okay. I look over, my first hole on TOUR, and there used to be a little leaderboard right at the bend of the 18th fairway. It said, Howard Twitty, 9-under, 9-under, 9-under. The palm trees are like this (indicating laying down). There's no way I'm shooting 9-under par here. I missed the cut by 11 shots or something (laughter). I was like, wow, what have I gotten myself into? It's always been a comfortable place to play. In '06 I started the year in Hawaii on the 10th hole, I hit driver, 9-iron, 20 feet to the hole, made it. In 07, I hit driver, 9-iron, same pin, exact same putt. I'll bet you it was within that much, and my ball was that much from where it was. I said, "Can you believe this?" He said, "What?" I said, I just played the same exact hole I played last year. Probably had the same tee time. Driver, 9-iron up the hill, 20-foot putt, birdie. I must have made or chipped in ten shots over 20, 25 feet last year. Those are the things that happen when you win. Very few guys are winning missing everything. It just doesn't happen. Q. No Michelle Wie this year? PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah, I don't know if she asked for one. I don't know what's going on there. Sony is one of her sponsors. Q. It didn't seem prudent. PAUL GOYDOS: Her taking a breath, probably a good idea. Maybe her injuries are worse than we thought. We don't know what's going on there. She had a rough year. Sometimes we forget she's 18 years old. Q. Do you think Tiger, Phil and Adam taking a break this week is a good idea? PAUL GOYDOS: It doesn't matter. My feeling is this event, again, is the most important event you can qualify for. For me, I have a different perspective than a guy that wins ten times a year, big deal. I think it's an important event. But again, for me -- I don't have to endure what a Phil or a Tiger has to endure each week when you play. I don't have 1,000 media requests. I don't have the constant hounding for autographs. It's just a constant -- they're outside, and it's a constant barrage of people asking for things. That's got to be difficult. Does Tiger get death threats? I can't believe he doesn't. I think anybody who has that level of fame is going to get those -- he's got a family and you're worried about your family's safety. There's a level of pressure that's on Tiger and Phil -- Tiger played in the playoffs. Let's say he wins the first one and he finishes second in the second one and I finish third in the third one and he's in second place, you guys are going, what the hell is wrong with you? I just went one, two, three, and you're saying, "You're going the wrong way here, pal." That can't be easy. That's a lot of pressure. When I hear those guys aren't playing, hey, until I'm in their shoes I'm not going to worry too much about it. Q. Do you kid yourself at all saying it's pretty cool to be playing in this era? PAUL GOYDOS: I think it's by far, no matter what Dan Jenkins might think, the best era in golf history. I don't even know the man -- Q. Kind of like that Hogan guy? PAUL GOYDOS: Who was obviously a great player. You can find some great players, Vijay Singh, Jim Furyk, pretty -- and then the depth, and then you go down to No. 10. There's no Zach Johnson's in Hogan's era. That guy didn't exist. I'm down there at 200 and I won last year. The depth level is just ridiculous. Playing in the Tiger Woods era we're not going to be able to appreciate because we'll be dead, that this guy is a once-in-a-millennium guy. It's just nuts. It's not fair to compare him to Nicklaus, but it's nuts. He's going to win 100 events and probably 25 majors. Phil Mickelson has had an unbelievable -- Phil Mickelson is going to win 50 events, and I think probably maybe four or five or six majors, and he's going to be frowned upon (laughter). In an era to do that against -- that's incredible. All his majors have come during the Woods era, and they will be during the Woods era. That's pretty impressive. Q. If you could look at your crystal ball, at what point is Tiger no longer the man out here anymore? PAUL GOYDOS: When Tiger decides he's not going to play. Q. Is it because he's gotten older or because as he's gotten older someone will replace him? PAUL GOYDOS: No one is going to replace him. Again, the thought that this person would exist in the ten years you're telling me there's going to be a guy winning 100 events, I would have laughed in your face. You're out of your mind. Never going to happen with the depth because the depth is going to be better in ten years than it is now. When Tiger decides it's time for him to not do it anymore, that's when it'll change. I don't think there's any question about that. He may have an occasional year like he had in '04 where he finishes fourth, and '98 he finished fourth, I think, too. I can't believe he's, what, 30 years old, 31 years old -- Q. Actually 32. PAUL GOYDOS: So in eight years, he's going to have close to 100 events won probably by the time he's 40. I don't think he's going to be playing when he's 45, either. His choice is going to be made earlier than that. When Nicklaus was 50, 51, 52, he won all the senior majors. He won all of them. Now they have five of them. He won the Tradition three, four, five times. Of course it's his own course (laughter). I just played there. I like it there. Q. How old are your daughters? PAUL GOYDOS: 15 and 17. Q. Senior? PAUL GOYDOS: Senior and a sophomore. I was hoping her graduation was during Torrey Pines, but it's not. I can still try to qualify. That U.S. Open is going to be crazy. That is going to be a crazy U.S. Open. Have you guys made your hotel reservations yet? If you haven't, you're not going. I remember during the San Diego Open, the Buick, I left my hotel at 4:30, got to the course at 6:00. Q. What's your point? A lot of traffic? PAUL GOYDOS: Hopefully your deadline isn't until midnight and you can stay there. And they have the fair going on right down there in Del Mar, too. But I'll tell you, the USGA officials will have all those hotels right there at the course booked. It's crazy. There's an Embassy Suites the other way, too. I thought Torrey Pines was fine before, personally. It was a good golf course before. I don't know how they're going to play it par. That golf course is still playing par 70. They said 18 is going to be a par 5, which is shocking to me because the guy who wins it this year, most likely it's going to be Tiger or Phil, and they're going to have -- if you have a one-shot lead and you're on the 18th hole of the U.S. Open and you want to watch a guy hit 2-iron, 5-iron, wedge, that's what they're going to do. Q. When was the last birdie hole at a U.S. Open on 18, birdieable hole? Probably Pebble. PAUL GOYDOS: Yeah. They don't have them now. It definitely wasn't 18 at Oakmont. Q. Or Bethpage or Winged Foot or Southern Hills. PAUL GOYDOS: 18 at Bethpage was not anywhere near the most difficult hole. It was kind of a funny driving hole. Q. Winged Foot was a bogey hole. PAUL GOYDOS: Winged Foot 18th hole was crazy. Q. I was kind of kicking around the idea, it's going to sound really stupid, I'm sure, but if there's such a thing as a cheap 59 from the standpoint of played at a place like Torrey North, the Palm Course at Disney, which are a resort used two days. We've seen people flirt with it on those courses? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know that the Palm Course is necessarily good. The scores they shoot at Disney are ridiculous. The Mag is 7,600 yards long. The Palm is 7,000 and you've got to drive it a little bit out there and it's never as dry as the Mag because it's a swamp so it plays a little longer. Chip Beck shooting 59 at some course I've never heard of in Las Vegas, I heard that was a bunch of drivers and wedges, I don't know. At some point in time he had a six-footer he had to make. I don't care where you are, you have to make a lot of putts to shoot that score. Duval shot 59 at PGA West the last hole. That's the greatest 59 there is. That was Sunday and he won by one. That's ludicrous to shoot that score. I played two or three groups in front of him that day. Q. What did you shoot? PAUL GOYDOS: 64. We were even after 11 holes. I was even with him after 11. I was 7-under after 11, and he proceeded to play the last -- I played the last seven holes 1-under, and he played them 6-under. I think he beat Steve Pate. How do you feel if you're Steve Pate? He birdies the last hole to shoot 59. Okay, that didn't work. That's an incredible round. Again, it doesn't really matter where it's being played. The circumstances dictate that round. He made an eagle on the last hole and he hit like a 5-iron, but it's still a pretty impressive feat. Q. I was thinking about it at East Lake actually last year, which was laughable, soft, pins in the middle of the green because that's where the grass was -- PAUL GOYDOS: Did someone shoot a low one there? Q. Zach shot 60 and Tiger shot 28 through nine, I think. PAUL GOYDOS: Did they play it all the way back? Q. All the way back wasn't a problem, but the greens had no grass around the fringes so they pretty much had to put the pins where there was grass. PAUL GOYDOS: I think they were having issues. I think the playoffs worked out fantastic. I think most of the criticism I heard is silly things, the money is deferred, who cares? Really it's about ratings. Look what happened at Deutsche Bank. They couldn't have scripted it better than what happened there, those two guys going at it head to head. Q. Plus Vijay for the first two rounds, when are you ever going to get those three together? PAUL GOYDOS: Right. All of the things that we've talked about that have been negative about the FedExCup have been ticky-tack. The reality is the best player won. We had Steve Stricker in the playoffs. I want to say he might have Top 10ed in all four of them. I know he did in three. No one wrote the fact and no one talked about the fact -- and Tiger finished up there, and that happens. But a guy like Stricker, who in the late 90s was a Ryder Cup player, a good solid player, comes down to the playoffs. And golf is fickle, you never know when -- I don't know what his track record was in Boston or Westchester or Cog Hill. He had won Cog Hill before, I know that. I don't know if he had played well at Westchester before this time. And all of a sudden the guys who are in the Top 10 in the points when the playoffs started were the guys who played well. That doesn't happen in golf. The top guy, Tiger, Phil, that's no surprise. But actually Rory played well in the playoffs, Stricker played well in the playoffs, all the guys who played well the whole year played well -- that's not golf. That's weird for golf in my opinion. Maybe I'm missing something. Q. Do you think it was a fluke? PAUL GOYDOS: I don't know what it was. They couldn't have scripted it better. The guys that earned really the right to play and had a chance to win were the guys that then went out and performed well in the playoffs. Generally the winner of the TOUR Championship isn't always the guy that ends up No. 1. That just isn't the way things work out. This year the guys who had already played well, played well. I think that was unique. One year is not the way to measure those things, but I thought that was unique about our players and how these guys stepped up to the plate and acted like this was more important than, say, the regular TOUR and the regular events, and it was like a playoff in a sense because the top players played well. I thought that was odd in a good way. Q. Have you read through your drug manual? PAUL GOYDOS: I've read it. I think it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. But unfortunately it's your fault. It's not the players, it's the media. It's the media. I can't imagine there's any -- first of all, what's a performance-enhancing drug? Please tell me that. They call them that for no reason whatsoever, because there's nothing out there that makes you make more putts. Now, is there a longevity stuff, maybe steroids -- I've taken those packs where you take six one day -- it's a steroid pack, prednisone or whatever. I tore cartilage in my ribs and took those, and instead of being out for three weeks I was back in one week. It was healing progressing, yeah. But performance-enhancing drugs, it doesn't exist here and it doesn't exist in baseball. Q. But if you have a clean score card don't you want to show it? PAUL GOYDOS: That's the problem we have. The problem is we don't test. I've had these conversations -- I'm not saying we should. We're stuck now. If we don't test that's going to be written. If we test and get nobody testing positive or very, very few they're going to say we're covering it up. If we test and have a lot of guys, they're a bunch of dopers. Where do you go? You can't win. The TOUR is pretty smart, though. I think they're going to figure it out and we're going to do our thing. Here's the other thing. Hormones. I don't know what this stuff is. But let's go with testosterone. What if I eat a lot of beef? We know that cows are injected with hormones to keep them lactating. If I drink a gallon of milk and then test the next day am I going to test positive? I can tell you I'm not going to Ruth's Chris Steak House that week. That's where you need to educate me. If I go out and here's what I do, I drink a gallon of milk a week -- I don't anymore but if I'm on the road I might eat a steak once a week. Am I going to -- is there anything in there? Then I'm fine. I'm going to test myself. I'm going to find a lab and test myself probably as soon as I figure out how to do that. We have products on TOUR, Amino Vital, I take a product called Emergen-c, electrolytes, vitamin B and vitamin C. That's what's in there on the label. I don't know what's in Amino Vital. They say there's this, but there's no golf regulation of these products. I wouldn't take them. Q. A couple guys take stuff for low testosterone, so does that show? PAUL GOYDOS: That seems weird to me, the only way you can get testosterone is to rub it on your body? We've sent people to the moon. You just take a pill and it helps you? Think about that. You laugh at that but there's a reality to that. My brother is a cancer surgeon, and they cure cancer with medication, but you have low testosterone you've got to rub a cream on your shoulder? I wouldn't do it just out of -- I'm not doing it, just out of principle. I'm not rubbing that stuff on me. Give me a pill. It seems odd to me. But I think unfortunately that's the society that we live in, and we've come this far. Baseball, look what's going on in baseball. They are a disaster. I don't know how to fix this one. Q. You're not a giants guy, are you? PAUL GOYDOS: I'm an Angels fan. They've had their share. I don't know what's going on there. I don't know what these people think they're trying to do. They're not fooling anybody. Barry Bonds has never tested positive as far as we know. You've just got to look at him. Who do you think you're fooling? Football knows what's going on, but those guys are making it -- it's a necessary evil of our society. It's everybody's fault except mine (laughter). There's obviously a media hype here involved, and there's going to be guys who are going to say things. I guess if it's what he said, we have to prove ourselves, then that's unfortunate, but that's the world we live in. STEWART MOORE: Paul, thanks for coming in. End of FastScripts |
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